India’s ‘most-wanted’ blunder

Incompetence by India’s terror-investigating agencies seems to have damaged its ‘external’ policy, especially on the issue of Pakistan giving refuge to individuals accused of carrying out acts of terrorism on Indian soil. New Delhi made a list of 50 top criminals on the lam living in Pakistan, including such internationally condemned ones as Dawood Ibrahim. But now, it turns out that two men included in the ‘most-wanted’ list were found to be present In India!

If you look at the charges, the boo-boo is so serious that a number of heads should roll in the departments concerned. One Feroz Abdul Khan, arrested in connection with a shipment of arms and ammunition for the Mumbai blast that killed 250 people in 1993, is actually in a high-security Indian jail awaiting trial. The other, Wazhur Qamar Khan, is currently on bail after being arrested in connection with another blast in Mumbai in 2003. The opposition is calling for the resignation of the union home minister, and perhaps rightly so.

India’s Home Minister P Chidambaram, whose ministry issued the list and who has been asked to go home, has called it a ‘genuine oversight’ but has contented himself with the pantomime of suspending one employee of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and transferring two others. The upshot has been a lot of laughter and sarcasm in the Indian press and more negative fallout for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh after the recent cases of unprecedented corruption in his coalition government. More negative, than even that, has been the reversal the two cases represent to the policy of blaming Pakistan for every crime taking place in India. Understandably, India has withdrawn the list of men ‘hiding in Pakistan’.

The public relations disaster the above case represents is clearly owed to lack of coordination and the miserable state of management in the police department, which like in Pakistan, is a provincial subject. One can’t rejoice too much over this disorder of information crucially needed when making foreign policy cases at the centre. One has read reports of lack of coordination, not only between the federation and the provinces in Pakistan but even among the various intelligence agencies battling terrorists in Karachi. India seems to be no better than Pakistan, where senior police officers accuse India of blowing up shrines only to hear later that the Taliban have owned the act.

Looked at closely however, India’s problems of lack of coordination are far more serious in that they tend to impinge on Prime Minister Singh’s project of patching up relations with Pakistan. For many years, the newspapers have steadily reported the savage manner in which visa-overstaying Pakistanis are treated in India. Innocent citizens with flawed documents are thrown in jail and then forgotten for decades. This happens even after an Indian court has ordered that the prisoner be released. This kind of delay has at times stretched to over a decade. Prisoners are treated cruelly just because they are Pakistanis, often returned after they have succumbed to torture. Lack of coordination? One can say that too — but also state-inspired national hatred.

One can go on and on about how India treats Pakistani, Sri Lankan and Bangladeshi fishermen who stray into its waters. Is this lack of coordination or also a kind of swaggering ‘big-power’ behaviour with the ‘lesser’ neighbours? India has been remiss in not reacting to these complaints in time, and it is now paying for it with an extremely damaging blow to its image as a successful ‘shining’ state in Asia, with its democracy and human rights intact. Above all, it is a stab in the back of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who is promoting a new regional identity to South Asia based on economic well-being and peace with all India’s neighbours, including Pakistan.

The other side of this sad coin is the hatred that Pakistanis feel for India, on the basis of which they tend to distrust India’s plaint relating to terrorism. The latest blunder will only help in strengthening this negative trend in Pakistan. Unfortunately, it has taken place at a time when Mr Singh is trying his latest friendly overture to Pakistan.



Published in The Express Tribune, May 22^nd, 2011.