The Curious Case Of Binod Mistry

The voter’s identity card of one Binod Mistry, found in a Buddhist robe abandoned at the Mahabodhi temple and picked up by security forces on Sunday after the blasts, has led to the carpenter’s detention.

Mistry, a carpenter based at Barachatti in the Gaya district, denies any involvement of course. But he has reportedly told interrogators that his ID card was misplaced or ‘stolen’ when he was working in a temple adjacent to the Mahabodhi temple some time ago. There is, however, no explanation so far why the carpenter chose to carry the card to the temple.

Even more intriguing are phone calls made by the carpenter to numbers in Mumbai and Delhi just before and after the blasts on Sunday. The timing of these calls, around 4 am and 6 am, raises more questions than answers. Why would an humble carpenter make phone calls from Gaya to the metros at that hour? Answers to these questions could well hold the key to unravelling the terror attack on an unlikely temple at an unlikely hour.

The NIA is exploring the possibility that the perpetrators intruded into the temple premises robed as monks. It was clearly not the job of a solitary person and probably involved a group of five or six people, who carried and planted as many as 13 bombs at 13 different locations. While 10 of them exploded, three did not and were defused later.

One of the bombs placed at the foot of an imposing Buddha statue placed on a high pedestal would have required the use of a ladder. The question is whether a carpenter and a group of workmen, accompanied by supposedly monks in robes, could have evaded temple security and failed to arouse suspicion.

Another aspect being looked into is the possibility of the remnants of the LTTE launching an attack, specially since July and August are months, which, according to residents of Gaya, attract pilgrims largely from Sri Lanka.

The fact that the bombs were placed largely inside the Mahabodhi Temple and the Karmapa monastery has prompted investigators to look into the possibility of an “internal conflict” among the Buddhists.

But prime suspects continue to be Islamic terrorists. Television channels were quick on Sunday to provide the “explosive” information that the bombs which failed to explode and were defused, carried inscriptions in “Urdu”. None of them paused, however, to ask why alleged operatives of “Indian Mujahideen”, presumably Muslims and taught and trained in madrasas, needed the telltale sign to stamp their imprint.

It is lucky, however, that some of the bombs, three of the thirteen to be precise, failed to explode. Because, according to journalists and policemen at Bodh Gaya who had seen the inscriptions, they were apparently directions written in Urdu. On one of the bombs was written “Bada Buddh” [in some accounts it is mentioned as Bada Butt, or the Big Statue] in Urdu and on the other was written “Bus”, prompting the speculation that they were meant for the tallest Buddha statue and the bus-stand respectively. On the remaining bomb that was defused was written “ Revenge for the attack on Iraq”. While the NIA will hopefully be able to crack the case, with so many footprints left behind, it does appear more and more unlikely that the attack was meant as a retaliation on Buddhists for the assault on Rohingya Muslims from Bangladesh in Myanmar. One can argue that no terror module running the risk of detection would care to be so transparent. But that would be in the realm of conjecture and is best left for the investigating agencies to address.

Within hours of the blast, Delhi’s outgoing Police Commissioner, Neeraj Kumar, held a press conference to disclose that suspected IM operatives had confessed that they had conducted the reconnaissance of the Mahabodhi temple for a possible attack, and that the intelligence input was passed on to the Bihar government.

Did the Police Commissioner call the press conference on his own ? Or was he asked to do so by the government ? It is worth recalling that Neeraj Kumar had challenged the appointment of Ranjit Sinha as Director, CBI, and was supported by BJP leaders Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj.

But why would the avengers choose the lean season to launch the revenge attack ? Since they had presumably done the reconnaissance, they would have known that the temple attracted the largest number of pilgrims and visitors between the months of October and March. The Rohingya issue, more specifically circulation of mischievous images of dead bodies, had agitated large number of Muslims last year, allegedly leading to the ruckus in Mumbai, attacks in Assam and the exodus from Bangalore —but an attack in July, during the rains, and a year after the flash point?

It makes even less sense that the bombs were set off between 5.30 and 6 am in the morning. The intention clearly was not to inflict maximum damage or to maim or kill the largest possible number of people. The intention was clearly to shift the narrative, divert attention and hog the headlines on TV. But what kind of narrative or discourse would the perpetrators have hoped for? Assuming dreaded Islamist terrorists did launch the terror attack, did it serve their purpose?