This should have made front page headlines in all national dailies and news channels. This should have been telecast as “breaking news” by our TRP hunting TV channels. There should have been a demand for a CBI investigation. Those involved should have been charged with high treason. We could have expected terror experts and consultants, who often lead us into wild goose chases and blame Gujarat riots as the cause of all terror, to have taken note of these anomalies. But instead, I find that these very significant news items are conveniently tucked away in the inside pages of the Times of India. There is not even an editorial to discuss these issues.

In the “Times Nation” section of The Times of India, published from New Delhi on Friday, August 1st, one of the news items is titled: “SIMI men let off by Kerala cops behind Bangalore blasts?”. The reporter questions whether precious lives could have been saved in Jaipur and Bangalore had Kerala cops not bungled in a case involving some senior SIMI activists arrested by them, who are now seriously believed to have masterminded the Jaipur and Bangalore blasts. The tale began when 18 SIMI men were rounded up during a raid in Aluva in Ernakulum district on August 15, 2006. The Kerala police however inexplicably filed cases only against 5 of them and let off the rest. Even the other 5 were later released on bail and the Kerala police have till now not filed a case against them. Well, this by itself would not have been much of a news as we are all by now used to this kind of kid-glove treatment of criminals from the so-called “minority community” in states ruled by “secular” governments under the pretext that “communal harmony will be disturbed”. However, now 2 of these very same SIMI activists, Ansar Moulvi and Sahduli, who were released on bail from Kerala, have been caught by the Rajasthan police for investigation of their role in the Jaipur blasts. And another one of these 5 have been arrested by the Karnataka police after the Bangalore blasts. The fourth Nizamuddin has fled India and is said to be operating from Saudi Arabia. No one knows where the fifth is! The Kerala cops made no attempt to collect evidence and did not even perform the usual Narco test on these suspects when they were in their custody. The news report claims that an MLA belonging to the ruling Left Democratic Front in Kerala is reported to have called up on one of these SIMI men in jail after his arrest. There is no doubt that one of the reasons for the police’s bungling was political pressure.

In the “Target India” section of the same newspaper of the same day, there is a one-column news item which reads “UP Police let go suspect under pressure.” According to the report, written by a Muslim reporter Pervez Iqbal Siddiqui in Varanasi, the Jaipur police were forced to release a terror suspect after hundreds of local Muslims took to the streets in protests. The suspect had been arrested and was been taken to Rajasthan for questioning when the Varanasi police fearing communal clashes because of his arrest, asked the Rajasthan police to release him. In fact the Rajasthan police team was already well on their way back to Jaipur with the suspect, when the Varanasi police tracked them in Kanpur, and asked the Rajasthan policemen to release the suspect, on the supposed surety by Samajwadi Party MLA Abdul Samad and Abdul Batin, a local Varanasi chief. Now, tomorrow if this local suspect masterminds a tale of terror, who would have blood in his hands? Just the terrorists, or the UP police which succumbed to political pressure or the SP leaders and politicians who intervened on behalf of the suspect or the hundreds of local Muslims who obstructed valid police proceedings?

In 2001, the Students Islamic Union of India was banned by Vajpayee’s NDA government. At that time, Mulayam Singh Yadav had publicly defended the SIMI and communalized the issue by claiming that the move was against the minority community and amounted to Muslim bashing. Yadav had alleged that the ban on SIMI was aimed at bringing a large part of the population under the ambit of doubt and terror to divert peoples' attention from the "failure" of the BJP-led union and state governments on all fronts. [1] Some suggest that even Sonia Gandhi disapproved of the ban on SIMI. [2]