The Pox And After

It helped that the state machinery functioned as it is meant to. For one, there was hardly any rhetoric or rabble-rousing; the sabre-rattling and covert sms campaigns by VHP cadres were restricted. Then, there was immediate police deployment with stern orders to ensure peace and quell "reactions" at any cost. At the emergency cabinet meeting held within half an hour of the explosions, chief minister Narendra Modi deployed the Rapid Action force (RAF) and requested army presence. An hour later, as the magnitude of the terror attack began to sink in to the average Amdavadi, 24 companies of State Reserve Police and five companies of paramilitary were deployed. The CM went on air to appeal for calm and restraint. The state had done its bit to ensure peace.

In communally polarised Gujarat and with Modi at the helm of affairs, this has more significance than it would in any other place battered by bomb blasts. Bangalore, Jaipur, Hyderabad, Mumbai all kept sane counsel when attacked; hardly anyone expected Ahmedabad to. The attack claimed 51 lives and left 200 injured. The 17 bombs—again a cocktail of ammonium nitrate, nuts and bolts, gas cylinders and timers wrapped in the Vadodara edition newspapers—were sequenced to go off systematically from the city outskirts towards its core. Modi’s constituency Maninagar was hit first. Then the blasts rocked Hatkeshwar Circle, Bapunagar, Narol, Ishanpur, Sarangpur bridge, Sarkhej, Raipur, Civil Hospital, LG Hospital and Vastrapur. Witness the locations of cycle bombs—near VHP leader Pravin Togadia’s house, at Hanuman temple in Narol. Then one on an Ahmedabad municipal transport bus timed to go off at Sarkhej, a Muslim-dominated area.

Investigators say the terror attack was planned in a manner that bombs would explode in pairs, within minutes and metres of one another, for maximum impact. Worse, two of the most powerful devices were timed to go off at hospitals where the dead and injured in earlier blasts were likely to be brought, marking a new low and ruthlessness in terror attacks. At the Civil Hospital, eyewitness accounts said that even as the grievously injured were being eased out of an ambulance, a Wagon-R (one of the four stolen cars from Navi Mumbai) came to a halt right behind. Within minutes, there was a deafening blast and over a dozen bodies lay maimed, blood splattered all over, the trauma care centre itself badly damaged. The car was a mutilated piece of junk, the ambulance reduced to a grotesquely shaped tin sheet with body parts strewn all over it. Ten people died instantly.

Tales of lives cut short abound. Three young men who had come to the hospital to volunteer and donate blood were killed. Thirty-two-year-old Dr Prerak Shah, an orthopaedic surgeon and his 28-year-old, three-month pregnant wife Kinjal perished.

Eleven-year-old Rohan and eight-year-old Shraddha who had accompanied grandfather to visit their hospitalised grandmother could not be found. In the middle-class Greenpark Society, Geetaben lost her husband and two sons, caught in the blasts while out learning to ride bicycles.

As always, the question begs itself: will the government and police get the perpetrators? The e-mail sent five minutes before the first blast, signed off as ‘Indian Mujahideen’, threw investigators off balance, largely because there is little information about such a group, its structure, spread and functioning. A day later, the Gujarat police took Abdul Halim into custody. Halim, wanted in connection with the 2002 violence, is an activist of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) which had emerged as the key organisation in providing footsoldiers for earlier blasts. He was remanded to police custody till August 10. Three other men—Abdul Kadir, Hasil Mohammed and Hussain Ibrahim—were arrested near Surendranagar after they failed to explain their movements or the Rs 85,000 and 200 in UK pounds in their vehicle.

Ashish Bhatia, joint commissioner (crime), said, "The leads and trails are not simple. We are doing our best." But will their best be good enough? The Ahmedabad police—assisted by 25 teams from Mumbai’s ATSs and Delhi’s STF—have till now come up against blank walls. This, despite the police conducting combing operations, going through history-sheeters’ lists and so on. Other than a few clues such as the name of the cycle shop on two bicycles and the information from Navi Mumbai about the e-mail and stolen cars, there was little headway days after the blasts. "In material terms, the investigation has not led anywhere," admits a top cop. Four days after the blasts, Modi was out declaring a reward of Rs 51 lakh to anyone who offered concrete and credible information.

This follows the pattern in terror attack cases in the recent past; but the Ahmedabad police, facing its moment of truth, are finding it difficult to even get leads. The mistrust and hostility against the force is so high that residents in certain areas do not even talk to beat constables. Muslim men in khakhi stand totally condemned; the rest hardly inspire trust. "To reach into the heart of the city, the perpetrators must have had support and sympathisers," says M.M. Mehta, a former police commissioner of Ahmedabad, Surat and Vadodara. "The beat constable can’t venture into some areas. Human intelligence is negligible...it shows." Investigators haven’t made any headway in the clues linking gangster Rasool Parti and Mohammed Patangya of the Dawood Ibrahim gang to the blasts. State intelligence department sources say officers are deputed there as "punishment postings", posts at the lower levels have been vacant for years, and that the informant system (particularly in sensitive areas) has been virtually non-existent since 2002. "It’s a complete breakdown of the policing system," adds Mehta.

The capability of the force was mocked at in Surat from July 27 onwards. Two bombs were recovered that day, and as many as 20 more were found over the next three days, some placed in the most bizarre places such as behind hoardings, on treetops, on road dividers—and most tellingly in front of a police station and a police chowky. "It completely ridiculed the red alert," points out Mehta. Surat police commissioner R.M.S. Brar averred that there could be "local involvement" but was unable to explain how and why 22 bombs were placed in spite of a police alert. As a senior officer remarked, "Ahmedabad was terrorised by blasts, Surat was terrorised without." Officers offer two explanations: either the bombs, assembled differently from those in Ahmedabad (with a microchip rather than a timer), had wrong circuitry or they were duds planted to spread panic given that Surat is the state’s economic hub.

Whatever, the message had its impact. Even without a single explosion, Surat remained paralysed for three days—schools and colleges, malls and theatres, shopping and trading centres were all ordered shut. The diamond and textile industries were the hardest hit. Chetan Shah, president of the Southern Gujarat Chamber of Commerce, says, "Even a few days of business lost translates into a big hit because the diamond and textiles trade have an annual turnover of about Rs one lakh crore." Devkishan Mangnani, head of the Surat Textile Federation, says business dropped by 70 per cent because outsiders were wary of coming to Surat and placing orders. "Our daily turnover of Rs 100 crore was down to a trickle."

The losses hurt but many in Surat and Ahmedabad are willing to look at the larger picture—a Gujarat that remained calm. There is, as academics and activists point out, a climate of tension and mistrust among all classes of Gujaratis, a tendency to avoid certain areas of cities, guarded responses and so on, but there is great relief that blood did not spill on the streets. In Ahmedabad, a covert campaign against Muslims in the initial hours after the blasts subsided in the face of the army presence. Mohammed Salim, who works for a national newspaper and lives in Bapunagar, Togadia’s neighbourhood, pointed out, "Many living on the fringes of the city moved into Muslim majority areas fearing the worst. Twenty four hours later, it became clear that peace would hold. Reassured, the people returned to their homes."

Nearly 5,000 Muslims gathered at Lal Darwaja in the walled city a day after the blasts, women carried placards urging Hindu-Muslim unity and religious heads showed solidarity with the victims. "There is all-round revulsion and condemnation of the attack amongst Muslims," says Sharif Khan Pathan of the Citizens Relief Committee, a key figure behind the Shah-e-Alam relief camp for 2002 riot victims. Hanif Lakdawala, whose relief NGO works amongst the affected, says: "The community is united that the perpetrators deserve nothing but contempt." Has Gujarat turned the page?

By Smruti Koppikar and R.K. Misra in Ahmedabad