The Curious Case of David Coleman Headley

By Amaresh Misra

With the row over India’s access to David Headley growing acrimonious each day, the CIA’s double agent saga seems all set to open up a can of incredible worms. First, the case unmasks the pro-US face of the Indian English media. When the Headley saga first came to light, Vir Sanghavi of the Hindustan Times carried an editorial piece claiming that if `Headley is CIA, and knew about 26/11, the CIA knew about the attack.’ In other words, Sanghavi accepted the `conspiracy theory’—which in the eyes of the English media was `peddled’ by Aziz Burney and this author during the terrible aftermath of 26/11—that the event was a CIA/Mossad/RSS/ISI plot. In November-December 2008, Vir Sanghavi and his cohorts in the English media attacked both Aziz Burney and this author for spelling forth the `conspiracy theory’. Then after Headley’s name surfaced, they changed tune, without of course admitting their debt to Mr. Burney or this author. The fact of the matter is that in the 2009 Parliamentary elections, the English media was all set to project Lal Krishna Advani as India’s next Prime Minister. It was the feverish anti-RSS, anti-Mossad work done by Aziz Burney and this author that went a long way in ensuring the victory of Congress and secular forces. Now when the CIA hand behind 26/11 is slowly being unraveled, the English media is seeing red. It is again trying to portray Headley merely as a Lashkar operative, severing thus his links with the CIA. This highlights the second point, that basically Headley and the CIA cannot be de-linked. Thank God the government of India put into place the NIA, a new investigative agency. The NIA was set up, as the IB and other India agencies, especially the IB, had not only gone anti-Muslim—they had gone anti-India. This was proved in the case of Azamgarh boys picked up in and around the Batala House encounter on various bomb blasts charges. Most of the boys were products not of Madarsas, but modern schools. They were youngsters in their teens; they had made a mark for themselves in professional courses and were holding jobs in the new, professional sector of the economy. When Shri Digvijaya Singh, the General Secretary AICC and the most secular leader of the India, went to Sanjarpur (under the banner of anti-communal front) in Azamgarh to find out the facts for himself, he was shocked to find that Zeeshan, a boy from Azamgarh who on the fateful day of the Batala House encounter was giving his exams, had more than 50 cases slapped over him in more than 3 states—which meant that his parents could go on fighting cases for more than 100 years and yet Zeeshan would be in jail. There are dozens and hundreds of Zeeshans from Azamgarh and other districts of UP, Gujarat and Maharashtra languishing in various Indian jails on unsubstantiated charges. This in fact is India’s Guantanamo Bay story—that right here in the world’s largest democracy the Indian security services like the IB have secret detention and torture centers where innocent Muslim youths are tortured and put to death. The IB today has been infiltrated heavily by RSS, Mossad and CIA. In fact this one agency is an anti-national agency—it is obstructing the work of NIA and secular Indians like Shri Digvijaya Singh. Soon, in India’s interest, the IB will have to be closed down. All its communal officers will be hunted down and tried in a court of just law. The IB knew about Headley—this is proved by the fact that the SIM cards used by the ten 26/11 terrorists were purchased by an IB informer. Till date, the investigations into the 26/11 case, which the IB is handling, has been unable to state as to how the ten terrorists got hold of the SIM cards. The State IB chief of Maharashtra told a very senior Mumbai Police Officer just after 26/11 that he was `entirely in the dark about 26/11 investigations as Delhi (meaning the chief IB office) was handling it’. Basic information about 26/11 was not shared with secular Indian officers. The Headley lead would never have come to the fore had the NIA not stepped in. Now comes the news that the IB has set-up training camps in Gorakhpur, where it trains criminals—and then uses them to kill Muslim under-trials. The name of Chota Rajan is used as a convenient scapegoat. It is in this manner that dozens of accused in the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts, several other such accused in other cases, Muslim businessmen and men of influence have been eliminated on a systematic basis in Maharashtra. The latest in the long list of victims killed allegedly by IB is Shahid Azmi, the lawyer defending the accused of the 2006 Mumbai train blasts. Shahid had hit upon evidence which proved the innocence of the accused—and that is why he was bumped off, again by criminals with Nepal-Gorakhpur links! In fact, the state of Maharashtra holds the dubious distinction of almost institutionalizing the extra-judicial killing of Muslim youth and personalities. Headley was in India months and years before the 26/11 attack; he even surveyed Pune where a blast took place as late as February 2010. It beats one imagination as to how the IB did not know about Headley and his movements. There can only be two scenarios: that the IB is totally incompetent—or that the IB is heavily infiltrated by CIA and Mossad: the agency knew about 26/11 and did nothing to stop it. This places the IB at par with Headley, as executioners of 26/11 and mass murderers. There can be no other honest conclusion. Headley holds the key to the fact that 26/11 was not just a mere Lashkar operation—that it was a joint Mossad-CIA operation, conducted with possible ISI and RSS help. If the charge-sheet against Raj Kumar Purohit and Saadhvi Pragya, accused in the Malegaon and other blasts, is read, it is clear that there was always some sort of collusion between the RSS and the ISI. The so-called nationalists, the Hindutva forces took money to the tune of Crores of rupees from the ISI! The IB knows about this transaction but is keeping quiet!The Headley saga has links to Abhinav Bharati and pro-Hindutva terror groups. The pro-Hindutva terror groups are widely believed to be behind the Pune blasts where a combination of RDX and Ammonium Nitrate was used. Right after the visit of Shri Digvijaya Singh to Maharashtra in February 2010, the state home secretary spoke of the possibility of the involvement of Hindutva groups in the Pune blasts. Other officers, including the ATS chief Raghuvanshi, purported to be a RSS/opportunist man also spoke of this possibility. But then RR Patil, the Maharashtra Home Minister whose role during 26/11 was disastrous and who was removed from his post in the wake of the attack on Mumbai (but who was restored after the 2009 assembly elections), made amazing statements `that those who take the name of Hindu organizations in the Pune blasts will be punished’! How can a Home Minister make such a statement? Now we hear that Rakesh Maria, a notorious anti-Muslim officer, with pro-Israel links, a man who has killed and tortured innocents, has been made the new ATS chief and Raguvanshi has been promoted! Secular organizations in Maharashtra were demanding that Raghuvanshi be removed and that an honest, secular officer be made the ATS chief so that Hemant Karkare’s seminal work in cracking the shell of Hindutva communalism could be exposed. But Rakesh Maria is even worse than Raghuvanshi. It seems that the NCP in Maharashtra has taken a clear anti-Congress, anti-national line. RR Patil, who is a third grade, uncouth, thoroughly communal, NCP leader should be removed from his post. The Maharashtra chief minister should act, because if the NIA gets access to Headley, the latter’s links with Hindutva organization—and the whole RSS-Mossad-CIA-ISI-IB nexus—will be exposed. This nexus is working overtime to destabilize the Congress government and overthrow the commendable done by the party under the secular leadership of Sonia Gandhi.

Amaresh Misra is a famed historian and chief of the Anti-Communal Front of the All India Congress Committee (AICC)