17/02/2013
Arundhati Speaks: Arundati puts
forward 13
questions in her book on the
parliament
attack of Dec 13:
Question 1: For months before
the
Attack on
Parliament, both the government
and the
police had been saying that
Parliament could
be attacked. On 12 December
2001,
at an
informal meeting the Prime
Minister
Atal
Bihari Vajpayee warned of an
imminent
attack onParliament. On 13
December
Parliament was attacked. Given
that
there
was an ‘improved security drill’,
how did a
car bomb packed with explosives
enter the
parliament complex?
Question 2: Within days of the
Attack,the
Special Cell of Delhi Police said it
was a
meticulously planned joint
operation of Jaish-
e-Mohamma d and Lashkar-e-
Toiba . They
said the attack was led by a man
called
‘Mohammad’ who was also
involved
in the
hijacking of IC-814 in 1998. (This
was later
refuted by the CBI.) None of this
was ever
proved incourt. What evidence
did
the
Special Cell have for its claim?
Question 3: The entire attack was
recorded
live on Close Circuit TV (CCTV).
Congress
Party MP Kapil Sibal demanded in
Parliament
that the CCTV recording be shown
to the
members. He was supported by
the
Deputy
Chairman of the Rajya Sabha,
Najma
Heptullah, who said that there
was
confusion
about the details of the event. The
chief whip
of the Congress Party, Priyaranjan
Dasmunshi, said, ‘I counted six
men
getting
out of the car. But only five were
killed. The
close circuit TV camera recording
clearly
showed the six men.’ If Das
munshi
was right,
why did the police say that there
were only
five people in the car? Who was
the
the sixth
person? Where is he now? Why
was
the CCTV
recording not produced by the
prosecution as
evidence in the trial? Why was it
not
released
for public viewing?
Question 4: Why was Parliament
adjourned
after some of these questions
were
raised?
Question 5: A few days after 13
December,
the government declared that it
had
‘incontrovertib le evidence’ of
Pakistan’s
involvement in the attack, and
announced a
massive mobilization of almost
half
a million
soldiers to the Indo-Pakistan
border. The
subcontinent was pushed to the
brink of
nuclear war. Apart from Afzal’s
‘confession’,
extracted under torture (and later
set aside
by the Supreme Court), what was
the
‘incontrovertib le evidence’?
Question 6: Is it true that the
military
mobilization to the Pakistan
border
had
begun long before the 13
December
Attack?
Question 7: How much did this
military
standoff, which lasted for nearly
a
year, cost?
How many soldiers died in the
process? How
many soldiers and civilians died
because of
mishandled landmines, and how
many
peasants lost theirhomes and land
because
trucks and tanks were rolling
through their
villages, and landmines were
being
planted in
their fields?
Question 8: In a criminal
investigation it is
vital for the police to show how
the
evidence
gathered at the scene of theattack
led them
to the accused. How did the police
reach
Mohammad Afzal? The Special Cell
says S.A.R.
Geelani led them toAfzal. But the
message to
look out for Afzal was actually
flashed to the
Srinagar Police before Geelani
wasarrested.
So how did the Special Cell
connectAfzal to
the 13 December Attack?
Question 9: The courts
acknowledge
that
Afzal was a surrendered militant
who was
inregular contact with the
security
forces,
particularly the Special Task Force
(STF) of
Jammu & Kashmir Police. How do
the security
forces explain the fact that a
person
under
their surveillance was able to
conspire in a
major militant operation?
Question 10: Is it plausible that
organizations
like Lashkar-e-Toiba or Jaish-e-
Mohamme d
would rely on a person who had
been in and
out of STF torture chambers, and
wasunder
constant police surveillance, as
theprincipal
link for a major operation?
Question 11: In his statement
before the
court, Afzal says that he was
introduced to
‘Mohammed’ andinstructed to
take
him to
Delhi by a man called Tariq, who
was working
with the STF. Tariq was named
inthe
police
charge sheet. Who is Tariq and
where is he
now?
Question 12: On 19 December
2001, sixdays
after the Parliament Attack, Police
Commissioner, Thane
(Maharashtra),
S.M.
Shangari identified one of the
attackers killed
in the Parliament Attack as
Mohammad Yasin
Fateh Mohammed (alias Abu
Hamza)
of the
Lashkar-e-Toiba , who had been
arrested in
Mumbai in November 2000, and
immediately
handed over to the J&K Police. He
gave
detailed descriptions to support
his
statement. If Police Commissioner
Shangari
was right,how did Mohammad
Yasin, a man
in the custody of the J&K Police,
end up
participating in the Parliament
Attack? If he
was wrong, where is Mohammad
Yasin now?
Question 13: Why isit that we still
don’t know
who the five dead ‘terrorists’
killed
in the
Parliament Attack are?
