An Unexploded Bomb

Six days on, Malegaon has kept its peace but only just. Thata 'bomb' was found today at a busy shopping complex near the Mohammedia MadrasaCentre and mosque only underlined the fact that somebody for sure doesn'tlike this peace to prevail. News of the bomb sparked freshpanic, as the area was cordoned off and National Security Guard (NSG) bomb squadwas immediately summoned to defuse the device that was inside an unclaimed redbox found in a staircase.

Police claim that the law and order situation in thetown is under control — but the "anxiety level" among people hasperceptibly gone up. The deployment of Rapid Action Force (RAF) wasn't enough toassuage these fears. Police kept people away from the shopping complexwhile the media too were advised to stay out. Residents were asked to switch offcell-phones to rule out the possibility of remote detonation of any explosivedevice. The box with the 'bomb' was taken to a nearby school ground where theexperts worked to defuse the device.

"The confusion increased as sniffer dogs which were rushed to the spot gave a positive indication after smelling the miniscule level of explosive in the box," Inspector General of Police (Nasik range) PK Jain was to state much later, when he clarified that the device found contained only "a miniscule amount of the explosive substance used in firecrackers mixed with soil and stones and a pair of batteries". It was clear, as he said, that "it was an attempt to create communal tension". Actually, it only exacerbated the "communal tension" in the town as a large contingent of the RAF was deployed in the vicinity while police and religious leaders madeannouncements on the public address system, calling for calm as people ran infear out of the shopping complex.

But even before today's bomb-scare, you just had to scratch thesurfaceto know that Malegaon is a town waiting to explode. A special company of the RAFcomprising 150-odd jawans, backed by the Riot Control Police sent from Mumbaiassist the local police in keeping order; lasting peace is a different ballgame.Locals in the powerloom town with 7.5 lakh population, 70 per cent of it Muslim,are filled with outrage and rage – outrage at the fact that someone couldactually detonate RDX-laden bombs at the holiest of their places on a day ofsignificance Shab-e-Barat when they gather to remember their dead, compoundedby today's incident, and rage at the fact that the police seem not to havemoved an inch in investigating the blasts that claimed 31 lives and left morethan 200 injured.

The average Malegaonkar has kept his counsel. In fact, when news of bombsgoing off had spread in the town, Hindus queued up at hospitals to donate blood,some of them were Shiv Sainiks led by local leader Dada Bhuse who had beenpreviously charged with rioting against Muslims.

The police failure now stares everyone in the face and may well beresponsible for breaking the fragile peace. Since that fateful Friday afternoon,all that the police have got are some suspects (at the last count on Tuesdayevening, there were ten) rounded up for questioning, sketches of three men basedon eye-witness accounts, one of the two damaged cycles that were strapped withthe deadly bombs, some statements from cycle dealers who sold the two bicyclesearlier that day and a host of suspicions. "We have no made no concreteprogress and do not have any substantial clues yet," an officer told Outlookon Monday. Whatever little they chanced upon, they do not wish to share withcitizens for fear of sparking a backlash. The dilemma for the police is doubledby the communal arithmetic in Malegaon.

All investigations in the first few days did not help zero in on possiblesuspects, which is in stark contrast to the alacrity with which the needle ofsuspicion was pointed towards the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) barely hours after theMumbai train blasts on July 11. "They may be doing their job but it’s a factthat we are still not told who the perpetrators could possibly be. And thisgives rise to our belief that the cops are hiding something," remarked a clothmerchant Mohammed Khan Ibrahim Khan, coming out of one of the many mass prayersfor the departed held at various locations across the town on Monday andTuesday. The unwillingness of the investigators – local police helped by theAnti Terrorist Squad of the Maharashtra police – to even offer routine guessesabout the bombers’ identity has not gone down well with citizens here.

Some investigators offered a view that parallels could be drawn with the July11 blasts in Mumbai and that Malegaon blasts "resembled the handiwork" ofIslamic terrorist organizations like the LeT working with SIMI. It doesn’tanswer the question: why would Muslim terrorists want to harm Muslims and placebombs in and around a masjid? Point the finger of suspicion at right-wingHindutva groups so as to trigger off a communal conflagration?

But then securityexperts were too quick to rule out any involvement of Hindutva outfitslike the Bajrang Dal whose members were found dead while handling explosives inan activists’ home at Nanded earlier this year. If investigators suggestMuslim involvement in the blasts, they fear a backlash against the force itself.Already, two police jeeps were set on fire within hours of the blasts, the SP (Nashik)Mr Rajvardhan was almost beaten up when he reached the affected area the nextday to calm a mob, and men in khakhi are treated with derision and taunts acrossthe town. If investigators suggest Hindutva involvement, cops fear an eruptionof communal violence against Hindus. So, suggestive references like the onesmade in Mumbai or Varanasi or Delhi last Diwali cannot be hazarded, but thereare no concrete clues to offer either.

That the investigators should so blatantly rule out involvement of any Hindutvaoutfit is cause for concern. It’s one thing for people like Bhuse and otherHindutva leaders to assert that "no one from this side of the river will goacross and dare do something like this" but the fact remains that the cops arenot chasing some clues. Take the case of "fake beard" as it has come to beknown here. A tailor Aqeel Ahmed Ansari who works near the Bada Kabristan toldcops and bystanders that he had picked up a body from near one of the bicyclesand handed it over to volunteers in the ambulance, that this body did not havethe lower part of the torso and its beard had come off in the ambulance. Thesuggestion being that it was a fake beard and therefore the body of aperpetrator. Coincidentally, the two hospitals that conducted post-mortems saidthat they had together handled 30 bodies and none was without the lower half.Besides, this body could not be found in the morgue hours later that very day.The "fake beard" part perhaps reveals something, especially when against thebackdrop of several fake beards, typical Muslim and Sikh clothes, and relevantheadgear were recovered from the house of a Bajrang Dal activist in the Nandedblast case. Also significant is the Prime Minister’s statementon Tuesday that the role of right-wing Hindutva organizations must alsobe probed.

In Malegaon, it now takes two men to start off a debate on the blasts for amob of 50-70 to gather in less than five minutes, then arguments get out ofhand, tempers run high and there’s the possibility of violence right there."Some of my friends and I have been playing peace-keepers at so many nukkadsall the time in the last four days," said a loom worker Ayaz Ahmed who calmeddown a mob near Kapda Bazaar simply by shouting at them to disperse. There arepeople who believe that their children died so that Islam could be cleansed ofthe stain that it harbours terrorism and terrorists, in a sense making theirdead into martyrs to a cause. Then, there are people like Shakeel Ahmed MohammedSaleem and his brother Shafeeque Ahmed, each of who lost a teenage son in theMushvirat Chowk blast, but who dared to return the compensation cheque back toSonia Gandhi. Says Shakeel Ahmed: "Within 18 hours, they were handing outcheques calling the names of the deceased without a word of sympathy orcondolence. What kind of behaviour was it? We are not beggars. Humne haathfailaya nahin tha, humne haath badaya tha." The brothers offered to donateRs 5 lakh each if it could help nab the terrorists.

Their sense of insult and rage is finding support across Malegaon, a bustlingtown that was brought to near-collapse by machinations of politicians includingJD’s Nihal Ahmed, five-time MLA now touching 80 years. No one has a good wordfor Ahmed, many see him and the current MLA Sheikh Rashid (Congress) asself-serving politicians, taking advantage of communal polarization in the town.The town’s demand for a fully-equipped civil hospital, okayed by the stategovernment in 2001 after a round of riots, did not get the push until thebrothers pointed it out that day to Gandhi. Maharashtra Chief Minister VilasraoDeshmukh has only excuses to offer. "This is a town that governments havehated, still hate, and brand as a communal pariah. Why should we then honouranyone who comes here, however big he or she may be? People of Malegaon havebeen branded and insulted, now is the time to rise and show the stuff we aremade of. No one had refused to take a cheque from Gandhi," says Abdul Qayyum,former corporator. Even so, he counsels his people to keep peace.

It is, indeed, a very fragile peace.

Smruti Koppikar in Malegaon, with agency reports for today's unexploded bomb.