A NEWS ARTICLE FROM THE DNA

Here’s a special quiz: for DNA readers. Which two of the following four men are terrorists: David Coleman Headley Tahawwur Hussain Rana Vilas Pandurang Warak Rahul Mahesh Bhatt American investigators working for the FBI think it’s the first two which is why they have been arrested. On the other hand India’s own National Investigating Agency (NIA) seems to think it’s Warak and Bhatt who are the offenders and has been treating them accordingly. Perhaps this is not a time for levity considering that issues of national security are involved, but the fact remains that the NIA has treated Rahul Bhatt and Vilas Warak with a callousness which goes far beyond mere insensitivity. And in the manner in which it has handled these two young men you can see why the NIA fails in its primary duty which is to investigate terror plots and if possible, foil them. There is no doubt that it has failed in this job. Rana – who has a Canadian passport – was in India for three weeks in November 2008 and left days before 26/11. During his stay here he visited five cities – Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Pune and Kochi. Headley – who has a US passport -- also visited these five cities; in fact, he made as many as nine trips into India between 2006 and 2009, but neither he nor Rana were on the radar of the NIA as possible suspects who needed to be monitored. Yet, they were under the FBI’s surveillance, Headley for as long as a year before he was arrested last month and Rana for about half that time. Why did the NIA not have any clue of their diabolical intent? In fact, why did the name David Coleman Headley on a former Pakistani national not arouse suspicion? Why was the Indian Consul General in Chicago in such a hurry to give Headley a long term multiple entry visa? And why is it only now that no one found out that the name Headley was a camouflage for the man’s real name Daaod Gilani, and that he had served 15 months in a US prison for drug trafficking in Philadelphia? These are questions Mr Chidambaram, the Home Minister needs to ask those who are allegedly in charge of our nation’s security. After the colossal intelligence failures which led to the 9/11 felling of the World Trade Centre Towers in New York and the tube attacks in London, the United States and Britain have put into place surveillance systems of such magnitude and efficiency that no terrorist attacks have taken place there since then. This is not for want of trying. The US still remains Enemy No.1 for terrorists, and the UK is not far behind as a target. Yet with the help of intelligence gathering of a very high order, terrorist conspiracies have been nipped in the bud, terror networks have been exposed and many terrorists arrested before they could do any damage. In arresting Headley and Rana, the US may have foiled strikes in India, though it’s still possible that the two have installed sleeper cells in the five cities they visited. If so, the onus is on NIA to identify and neutralize them. Intelligence gathering relies on a network of informers, some of whom would be part of an agency like NIA, but many more of whom would be freelancers or people on retainership who provide information for payment or for reasons of patriotism. While the first kind, the freelancers, are essential for a continuous flow of information within groups likely to cause problems, there can be a huge informal network of the latter, citizens who out of nationalistic altruism will report suspicious activities on one, and only one condition. That condition being that there has to be a responsible and responsive person in the police or the NIA who will listen carefully, take notes diligently and ensure anonymity. Instead of that we get a sordid spectacle of Rahul Bhatt and Vilas Warak being hounded by the NIA, their names being made public so that the media could harass them, and worse, being treated as if they were under some kind of cloud. And why? Because they had the misfortune of meeting Headley by chance and getting to know him. How were they to guess that Headley had a criminal past or evil future intentions when the NIA itself had no clue ? In the US or the UK, the identity of witnesses is never revealed. A press release would have merely said “Two men are helping the police in investigations.” If Bhatt and Warak were volunteering information to the FBI or Scotland Yard, they would not have been summoned to the police station in the full glare of publicity; instead plainclothes men would have visited them in their homes and made discreet inquiries. You can’t blame the media for highlighting a story; it is up to the authorities to make sure the media does not get the story in the first place. In a while the frenzy of the current excitement will die down and Rahul Bhatt and Vilas Warak will get back to their normal lives. But will the ordeal they have gone through encourage other people to volunteer information to the police or NIA in the future? Would you go out of a patriotic sense of duty to report suspicious activities if there was a good chance that you yourself would be treated as a suspect? Is anyone now surprised why our intelligence agencies never gather any intelligence?