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Sunday, November 18, 2007

State Sponsored Terrorist Tactics and Dire Need of a Witness Protection Program

While on the subject of state sponsored terrorism about which I have written in this post, what strikes me is that it’s a serious subject that demands immediate attention. Two states of India – one governed by the right and the other governed by the left – have unleashed terror on the very people they should have protected. How odd! Are we moving towards anarchy, or what?

While covert attacks by the goons of governing parties have always existed, these attacks seem blatant and lacking in scruples. I think immediate action has to be taken to gauge the depth of the government’s involvement in these two cases of state sponsored terrorism. We are not yet a fascist state to condone such attacks. The methods used by these two governments are unethical and a threat to any civil society. Therefore only a detailed enquiry into these incidents by an impartial judge of the Supreme Court under the guidance of the union Law Ministry can flush out the people behind these incidents. Inquiries conducted by local officials, me thinks, have not been very effective.

While there is enough evidence through Tehelka’s sting operation on the complicity of the Gujarat government of Narendra Modi, Buddhadev Bhattacharya has openly defended his men’s violent actions in this statement in this NDTV article:

''I stick to that. Some people are trying to project that the violence was started by CPI-M workers. Last 11 months, the Bhoomi Uchched Pratirodh Committee, the Trinamool Congress and the Maoists were creating violence with arms. And last two-three days, CPI-M workers had paid them back in their own coin.''

While on the subject of terror, and, lest I forget, Gujarat, I wonder why India doesn’t have a witness protection program like in the US. The US has a Witness Protection Program through which witnesses in crucial cases against powerful people are given assistance, and aid and settled in separate localities in the country to prevent vendetta killings by the people against whom they have testified.


(Babu Bajrangi caught on candid camera. Courtesy: Tehelka)

The many retractions of statements by Zahira in the Best Bakery case and, recently, the retraction by a main accused in the gruesome Nithari killings may obviously originate from the use of intimidation by the powerful people behind these atrocities. If the witnesses were given protection under a “Witness Protection Program” and assured of financial help in settling in a different part of India, they would have come forward to testify the truth in court.

Something worth pondering, huh?

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