E-Paper
Safe encounters
The gunning down of Abu Zuber, an accused in the March 7 Varanasi bomb blasts case, is welcome.
The gunning down of Abu Zuber, an accused in the March 7 Varanasi bomb blasts case, is welcome. He was, however, not the ‘prime’ accused, but an important cog in the support structure of the three perpetrators who are back in Bangladesh. Zuber, an Indian national, was a member of the Harkat-ul-jehad-Islami, an outfit headquartered in Bangladesh, and was part of the gang that executed the bombings. But he was by no means its leader as is being claimed. Almost every major terrorist incident is followed by a spate of reports that the ‘main accused’ has been gunned down. In this case, confusion has already been sown by the claim of the UP police in early April that the ‘main conspirator’, Waliullah, an imam, had been arrested with five others. Now, the J&K police claim that they and the army were responsible for the achievement, while a UP police team in the Valley asserts that they provided the tip-off. The army rejects the claim but that’s par for the course when you get into the claim game.
This brings us to another claim: that a dreaded Lashkar-e-Tayyeba terrorist was gunned down at the Nehru Stadium in Delhi on Monday. Given the as-yet-to-be-fully-explained Ansal Plaza incident, such claims are to be taken with a pinch of salt. As it is, we are yet to know the true identities of the terrorists who attacked Parliament in December 2001. We know who helped them, but we don’t know who they were or who sent them. In early May, in a shoot-out with the real LeT, security forces lost three of its personnel while killing three terrorists. But the Delhi Police have never suffered a single casualty in the dozen or so ‘encounters’ they have had. After Kandahar, executing non-Indian terrorists is probably seen as a harsh necessity. But to introduce the kind of theatricality that the Delhi Police regularly do is unnecessary.
Neutralising dreaded terrorists is always cause for celebration. But by overstating their importance, the police generate a false sense of security in the public. What’s worse is that by exaggerating their own role and abilities, they hinder what should be a continuous effort to monitor the gaps in their performance, with a view to enhance their capabilities.