Why Antulay should think before he speaks

I think making fun of such people is the best thing to do. Read this really hilarious article:

http://www.iwebie.com/antulay-vs-ekta-kapoor

The Late Mr. Karkare was the TOP BOSS of the ATS. He did not need directive from anyone to go to a particular spot, leave alone Cama Hospital. On all accounts, it appears to be his own decision to go in the general area CST and was ambushed by the terrorists near Cama Hospital.

As for the decision of three officers to move in a single vehicle, one should realize that Mr. Karkare was the head of ATS. No police officer serving under him would leave him to go unescorted in an area where terrorists were firing indiscriminately. That it proved fatal to all of them was unfortunate.

It is therefore ludicrous on part of Antulay to ask “who directed Karkare to Cama Hospital”.

Another point I wish to make is that both Dawood and Antulay are Konkani Muslims from Raigad. Is there a link somewhere? Why would Antulay make a statement which undoubtedly is to the advantage of Pakistan? Is it meant to divert the attention from both Pakistan and the D company? A shrewd politician that he is, Antulay has seen that vote bank politics of UPA cannot afford to sack him. That explains his arrogance and scant respect for the sentiments of the whole nation. The nincompoops of UPA have not dared to ask for his resignation!

The Raigad co-religion link is very strong as is seen in the case of a famous music composer who was charged with the murder conspiracy of a music tycoon in Mumbai. It was widely rumored then that he was the protege of the Don (Gaon-wallah net) and has managed to live in London eversince.

Excerpts from Antulay’s doubt was brainless, shameless communalism (emphasis mine)

…What the Union Minister was insinuating was that some Hindus ( supposedly police colleagues) had calculatedly arranged to send Karkare to the Chhatrapati Shivaji (Train) Terminus instead of letting him go the Taj or Oberoi Hotel where the action was more hectic on the night of 26/11. Why Karkare and two senior colleagues were traveling together in the same car that night was beyond his imagination, said the Minister.

That this “conspiracy” and “unimaginable” suspicion ultimately ended in the minister having to eat crow does in no way wipe out the initial verdict that despite more than fifty years in politics Abdul Rehman Antulay had let his innate ideology triumph over available information, allowed stark communalism to win over commonsense. Such, we are told, is the passion embedded in Islam and its Qoran/Hadith et al.

It’s lamentable that sections of Antulay’s community welcomed him as a hero when he went to pray at the mosque outside the Lok Sabha where he had a little while earlier exposed his perverse and inflammatory thought process. Equally pitiable was that the Communists as a block and several Congressmen had sided, however glibly, with Antulay’s suspicion of the majority community’s inclination towards terrorism.

The basic fact ignored by Antulay — and all supporters of his “brave plain speaking” — was that before he made his infernal innuendo on December 17, he had all the time and all the clout to ascertain all the required info on Karkare’s death on 26/11. As a Union minister and as the ex-chief minister of Maharashtra, Antulay could well have used his free Member of Parliament’s air travel pass to come to Mumbai, enjoyed the state’s VIP guest house hospitality, summoned Maharashtra’s chief minister, Director General of Police and all seniors connected with Karkare’s ATS and obtained a written authoritative account of how exactly Karkare, Assistant Commissioner of Police, Kamte, and Police Inspector Salaskar had been slain by the bullets from Pakistan’s two terrorists near Cama Hospital that is just half a kilometer away from CST.

If Antulay had just come down to Mumbai on a fact-finding exercise, he would have learnt of the following events of 26/11 excerpted here from a report in The Times of India, Mumbai, December 19, 2008, penned, and let this be noted, by two Muslims, S.Ahmad Ali and Mateen Hafeez:

Around 9.45pm, the city police control room flashed a message saying there was a terror attack at CST railway station.

Hemant Karkare, having dinner at his home in Dadar (about 15 minutes by a red beacon car from CST) reached there and donned a helmet and bullet-proof jacket. Additional DGP (Railways) K P Raghuvanshi also joined him. But, while Raghuvanshi stayed back, Karkare, along with his four policemen, first went to the CST station’s platform number 1 but found it deserted, with no trace of any terrorists.
According to the city police commissioner, Hasan Gafoor (another Muslim, be it noted), “A fellow policeman informed them (Karkare and Raghuvanshi) that the terrorists were spotted walking towards (the nearby) Cama Hospital.” (This hospital’s rear entrance is half a kilometer from the start of the quiet, ill-lit lane adjoining The Times building which itself is bang opposite the CST; the hospital’s front entrance is alongside a busy footpath beside the city’s session’s court housing a police station.)
Meanwhile, Karkare received a wireless message, saying, “Additional police commissioner Sadanand Date is injured at Cama Hospital. A bodyguard is seriously injured, while another constable is dead.”
Karkare, accompanied by four constables, made for Cama Hospital while the Z-security guards were instructed to take position outside The Times building.
“Later”, as stated by Akhtar Shaikh, (another Muslim be it noted) who was Kakare’s orderly and who was present along with Karkare that night, “Inspector Vijay Salaskar and additional commissioner Ashok Kamte, who met at CST, arrived on the scene. Salaskar was accompanied by five of his subordinates.”

According to the text in the diagram accompanying the above mentioned Times of India report, Kamte got the same message as Karkare got at 9.45 p.m. and left his Byculla residence for CST. Salaskar, residing at a distant suburb, Goregaon, got a similar message, but en route a senior officer asked him to go the Taj hotel. By the time he got there, operations against the terrorists had begun, and joint commissioner of police, Rakesh Maria, told him on the cellphone to go to Colaba police station where, reportedly, two terrorists had been caught. Finding that two Israelis, rather than terrorists, had been apprehended by Colaba police station, Salaskar informed Maria accordingly and was then told by him to report to HQ. While reaching there he got a message from an officer about ACP Date lying injured in Cama Hospital. Hence his arrival and meeting with Karkare near Cama.
“As we headed towards the rear entrance of Cama Hospital, we heard gunshots. Kamte returned the fire, and the terrorists threw a grenade at us, but it fell within the hospital premises,” continued Shaikh.

Inspector Nitin Alaknure, Salaskar’s colleague, said, “Karkare, Kamte and Salaskar were discussing their next step. Kamte then suggested they enter the hospital from the main gate. They got into a police Qualis stationed there, and later, as they approached the special branch (of the Mumbai CID which is on the road to Rang Bhavan and Cama Hospital rear entrance) Salaskar took over the driver’s seat,” Alaknure recalled.
Rakesh Maria, Mumbai crime branch chief, said, “They (Karkare’s trio) got a wireless message that the terrorists were hiding behind a red vehicle near Rang Bhavan. They started looking for the red vehicle and suddenly spotted one terrorist, who was later identified as Mohammad Ajmal Kasab. Kamte and Salaskar opened fire.” (Karkare didn’t fire, be it noted)
The officers were about to get down from the vehicle when all of a sudden, another terrorist showered bullets from his AK-47, injuring all the cops. Kamte and Karkare died on the spot. The terrorists then threw the three policemen out of the car, and hijacked the vehicle. It was Arun Jadhav, the lone survivor, who later informed the control room about the incident. (Apparently, there were only four occupants of the Qualis and only Jadhav survived to tell the tale of death.)

Five conspicuous points emerge from the above newspaper report. One is that Karkare, the chief, entered battle himself instead of devising a strategy to trap and outnumber and arrest the terrorists. Two, he let Kamte decide that the team should enter the front gate of Cama Hospital. Three, he let Kamte and Salaskar travel with him instead of in separate vehicles. Four, he let his two colleagues fire on the lone terrorist they saw instead of working out a plan to corner him into a trap. Five, the trio did not even conceive of a second terrorist hiding near that red car, and firing at them with an AK-47.

The above paragraph leaves you, and Abdul Rehman Antulay, to draw conclusions that are too embarrassing to be put down here.

Oh yes, there’s Antulay’s crucial question: “Why did Karkare go to CST where there was nothing (in his words) and not to the Taj or the Oberoi?” Well, well, Antulaybhai, the Taj hotel attack began at 10.03 p.m., i.e. 18 minutes after the CST attack was intimated to Karkare having dinner at his home. If the Home Minister’s Lok Sabha statement on your insinuation doesn’t enlighten you on this time of the attack on the Taj, please see the front page of The Sunday Express of December 21, 2008.

*****
Excerpts from Let Antulay face inquiry by Balbir Punj (emphasis mine)

Abdul Rehman Antulay has written himself into history as the Mir Jaffer of the 21st century. He has given Pakistan a perfect alibi when that country was under the pressure of several nations to arrest jihadi terrorists and destroy their camps. His thesis of ‘Hindu extremists’ manipulating the 26/11 terror strikes in Mumbai to get Maharashtra’s ace police officer Hemant Karkare killed was what Pakistan was looking for when the world was supporting our country in its bid to force Islamabad to act against its military/ISI-sponsored jihaditerror structure.

Not withstanding his half-hearted retraction following Home Minister P Chidambaram’s clarification in Parliament on Tuesday, Mr Antulay has managed to expose his own Government to ridicule and embarrass India. What he has accomplished is a division within his own community that we thought was unanimous in its condemnation of the Mumbai terror attack as a war that elements in Pakistan are waging against India.

The Union Government, of which he is a part as Minister for Minority Affairs, has been claiming that Pakistan has all the evidence to prove that the jihadi terrorists who sought to spread mayhem in Mumbai were Pakistanis and that they were trained and directed by elements within the Pakistani establishment. Mr Antulay’s utterances have made his Government’s claim untenable while lending plausibility to Pakistan’s claim that the evidence provided by India does not conclusively prove the involvement of either Pakistanis or Pakistan.

The question arises: Why has Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who wants Pakistan to act, not sacked Mr Antulay from his Cabinet? The answer is simple: Mr Singh is not a free agent. He holds office as the nominee of the Congress president who has maintained silence on the Antulay episode. In fact some Congress leaders like party general secretary Digvijay Singh have already come to the rescue of Mr Antulay.

The comments of the Minister for Minority Affairs are in sharp contrast to the assertions of Mr Singh, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Mr Chidambaram — they have been telling Pakistan to act, otherwise India will keep its options open. Curiously, some of the Congress’s partners in the UPA have chosen to give Mr Antulay the benefit of their equivocation on the issue. It is not surprising that Pakistan, which found itself cornered by the international community till the other day, has now only to remind our Prime Minister what his colleague in the Cabinet has said — not once or twice, but repeatedly.

The strong demonstration of solidarity with other Indians by the Muslim community over the last three weeks was a welcome development for the country in its hour of tragedy. Muslims went to the extent of wearing black bands and abandoning Eid celebrations. In Mumbai, Muslim organisations refused to provide burial space for the nine Pakistani terrorists killed by the security forces.Such demonstration of unity in the wake of a challenge to the country had never happened before.

All that has been overshadowed by Mr Antulay’s comments. Top film starts like Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan and others may take anti-terror pledges on the small screen. But the community’s angry leaders like the Shahi Imam of Jama Masjid have backed Mr Antulay’s strange thesis, thus pointing their fingers at ‘Hindu extremists’ instead of Pakistani terrorists. Of course, this myth of Hindu extremism’ is itself a creation of the Congress.

…Meanwhile, after Mr Antulay’s bizarre remarks, others have voiced their view that there could be something to what he has said, and accused the majority community of ‘communalising’ the issue. After lying low for some time, the usual suspects who are seen as Muslim leaders are back to doing what they do best. The division within the community suggests that the show of solidarity was a temporary phenomenon.

Was Mr Antulay’s purpose to scuttle the solidarity? Was he trying to provoke Muslims into backing his bizarre theory and thus creating a division in the community? Assessing the impact of his comments, such a conclusion would not be entirely incorrect. Anybody who knows anything about Mumbai — and Mr Antulay knows the city — would not suggest anything remotely resembling what he said. In any event, it’s absurd to ask why Hemant Karkare and his senior colleagues rushed towards Cama Hospital instead of Taj Mahal Palace or Oberoi-Trident. The sequence of events, telecast live, answers this question.

Mr Antulay’s remarks were not off the cuff. We know why Mr Singh has not accepted his resignation. But there should be an inquiry into why Mr Antulay said something so unfounded and damaging.