Rahul in party mood soon after Mumbai crisis
Mail Today Bureau
New Delhi, December 1, 2008

Even before the tears of Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan’s mother could dry up, Congress general secretary and heir apparent Rahul Gandhi went partying with his pals at a farmhouse on Delhi’s outskirts.

The Prince partied hard, till 5 in the morning, on Sunday at the ‘sangeet’ for the forthcoming wedding of Samir Sharma, his childhood friend. They were at a sprawling farmhouse at Radhey Mohan Chowk, the haven of people who lead charmed lives beyond Chhatarpur.

Just a day earlier, his sister Priyanka Vadra had caused a flutter by saying the late Indira Gandhi would have “made us very proud” by the way she would have reacted to the Mumbai terror strikes. Mumbai appeared to be far from her brother’s mind as he boogied at the farmhouse with Samir Sharma, US-based furniture designer son of Captain Satish Sharma, the late Rajiv Gandhi’s flying partner who nursed the First Family’s pocketborough, Rae Bareli, till Sonia Gandhi chose to contest from there in 2004.

The Prince seemed to be completely out of sync with the mood of the nation post-26/11. Since Wednesday night, officials have been cancelling parties they were meant to host and even restaurants called off special events.

Saturday night’s ‘sangeet’ was a lavish affair. It was hosted by Leena Musafir, sister of the woman with whom Samir is getting married, and her husband Inder. The party was attended by over 800 guests, including regulars at Page 3 dos. “When everyone is cancelling parties or just keeping them low-key, Rahul Gandhi had no business to be celebrating. His action makes us lose faith in future leaders,” said Ajay Bahl, a leading corporate lawyer who was trapped in the thick of the action on 26/11 at The Oberoi, Mumbai, but managed to escape with the help of the hotel staff.

The Gandhis, including Sonia Gandhi’s mother Paola Maino, were present in strength at the 2004 wedding of Samir’s sister, Sarika, who is married to actorturned- TV producer Rahul Bhatt. Sarika and Rahul now manage a television production house.

The two families may be very close — Captain Sharma and his wife, Sterre, were present throughout the very private wedding of Priyanka Gandhi and Robert Vadra — but the circumstances now are very different.

As a guest at the ‘sangeet’ remarked on the condition of anonymity, “We were all partying, but none of us is a public person. Rahul Gandhi, however, is. He must be more responsible in his social appearances.

Since its independence in 1947, India has been facing the problem of insurgency and terrorism in different parts of the country. For the purpose of this column, insurgency has been taken to mean an armed violent movement, directed mainly against security forces and other government targets, to seek territorial control; terrorism has been taken to mean an armed violent movement directed against government as well as non-government targets, involving pre-meditated attacks with arms, ammunition and explosives against civilians, and resorting to intimidation tactics such as hostage-taking and hijacking, but not seeking territorial control.

India has faced exclusively terrorist movements in Jammu and Kashmir, bordering Pakistan, and part insurgent-part terrorist movements in the northeast, bordering Myanmar and Bangladesh; in Bihar, bordering Nepal; and in certain interior states like Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa that do not have international borders.

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NEW DELHI: Evidence is emerging that Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba controllers who guided the course of the November 2008 assault on Mumbai may have included at least one Indian national.

In a five-and-a-half-minute conversation with Imran Babar — the Lashkar terrorist, who, using the code-name Abu Akasha, took control of a Jewish prayer house in the Colaba area — a still-unidentified controller who appears to have been a native Hindi speaker provided detailed instructions to the terrorist on the contents of a statement he hoped to make to the media.

The conversation was among more than 200 phone calls made by the Lashkar controllers to the assault team on voice-over-Internet and satellite phones.

During the conversation, the controller used words like karenga — characteristic Mumbai usage for the phrase “will do” — as well as gathbandan, in place of the Urdu word, ittehad, for alliance, and prashasan, instead of intezamiya or hukumat, for government. All other conversations recorded in the tape are in Punjabi, Urdu and heavily-accented English.