THE STATUS that the Kapoors – Karina, Ekta or Shahid – and Khans – Amir, Sharukh or Salman – have been enjoying in the subcontinent has taken a beating. As India and Pakistan, the two major remnants of the once-invincible British India, started barking at each other in end-Nov, spoiling for a dogfight, Mohammed Ajmal Amir, alias Kasab (or Qasab), has become the top celebrity of 2008.

 

Kasab has been lucky to have Bollywood greats to script the lines for him. In fact, given the valuable information, including strategic plans, organisation and confessions he is supposed to have provided in a month, he could easily star in dozens of movies. The ‘baby-faced gunman’ has received extensive coverage in the Indian media, which splashed his pictures, flaunting a hi-fi gun, all over the place. Originally advertised as just 18-year-old, India’s intelligence bosses later revised his age to 21 for obvious reasons. He was lodged in the high-security Arthur Road prison – the dungeon intended for celebrity ‘terrorists’. That was where superstar Sanjay Dutt had been held for several months. Dutt too had invited the hubris of well-entrenched ruling classes as he exposed the rotten state to which organs of power of the ‘most successful democracy’ had sunk to. The band of ten gunmen, of whom Kasab was a member, did precisely the same thing between Nov 26 and Nov 29 in Mumbai.

 

However, Md Ajmal could enjoy monopoly for the celebrity status just for under a month. He got tough competition from the other side of the ceasefire line in Kashmir. Satish Anand Sharma (or Shukla according to some sources) hogged the limelight on Christmas Eve. Satish allegedly named three ‘accomplices’ who ignited a terror blast in a bus in Lahore. The Pakistan police picked up Ram Kumar, Ram Chandar and Parkash on Christmas day from the Shafeeqabad area and shifted them to an unidentified location for interrogation. Two pistols, a ‘modern’ camera and ‘secret maps’ were found on the men. The Indian ‘saboteur’ is very likely to hog headlines soon, mouthing stories invented by Islamabad’s spin doctors. These could be even more bizarre revelations than those thought up by their Indian counterparts.

 

Top guns in India, including the defence minister and foreign minister, claimed that tones of ‘evidence’ were allegedly provided by the lone survivor of the carnage. He corroborated that ‘elements’ in Pakistan were responsible for the attacks, based on which Prime Manmohan Singh’s government halted the peace talks with Pakistan. However, his government has chosen to not make them available to Pakistan. New Delhi maintains that this can only be done when its own investigations are over. However, hawks hired by them have been shouting from rooftops, reeling out ‘evidences’ that can stand only trials under India’s draconian laws, unacceptable to any other self-respecting judge. The secrecy about releasing any available evidence is apparently in ‘national security interests’ (interests of the babus responsible for national security!) 

 

Just like the Indian James Bonds, the Pakistani super-detectives said, “The chain of Indian spies and their connections with locals could be long!” After the visit of Satish to Androon Lohari Gate, where they claimed to make temporary stopovers for business purposes, the police observed a concentration of Hindus in the walled city locality of Lahore. Special Investigation Group (SIG) of the Federal Investigation Agency found a ‘remote-control cell phone’ at some distance from the spot of the Lahore blast on Wednesday and handed over to the for forensic analysis. According to them, “The presence of remote-control cell phone suggests that the people, who parked the vehicle, had used the device to blow up the high explosives.”

 

To a neutral observer, these ‘evidences’ are as credible as those leveled against Kasab by the Mumbai police. The police shot his partner Ismail Khan on Nov 26 – just like they had done a month previously while dealing with an unemployed Bihari ‘hijacker’ protesting against ‘discrimination’. Kasab was captured alive after an aborted attempt was made by the duo to break a police blockade near the Girgaum Chowpatty beach. The duo allegedly hijacked a police Qualis, gunning down officers Hemant Karkare, Ashok Kamte and Vijay Salaska. The officers happened to be probing the high-profile ‘Saffron terror’ that set off several blasts during the year. The police vehicle apparently ended up with a flat tyre at Marine Drive. Then, they hijacked a Skoda Laura. The story goes that as the Skoda took a zigzag route through the streets of Mumbai, the men inside opened fire in several locations.

 

The police took almost a month to line up some 35 ‘eyewitnesses’ for an identification parade in the jail premises. They would testify that they saw Kasab and partner Ismail Khan at Chhattrapati Shivaji Terminus, Cama Hospital, Metro Cinema, Vidhan Bhavan or Marine Drive, where Khan was shot dead by the police and Kasab captured. That included a constable Arun Jadhav who reportedly lay injured in the back seat of the police Qualis. There are takers, including magistrates, in India for such ‘identification’ coming after a full month beaming CCTV pictures of ‘the baby-faced gunman’ across the globe.

 

Outraged hyper-patriots have been advocating that the ‘butcher’ deserves no trial before being hanged. Any such misadventure is very likely to lead to some hapless Indian small time hooligan getting elevated to celebrity status in Pakistan.

 

The similarity in the plot in the crime thrillers in Mumbai and Lahore does not end with the heroes. Hours into the Mumbai carnage started several ‘reputed’ newspapers enjoying New Delhi’s patronage cracked the crime, reporting that a previously unknown outfit, known as Deccan Mujahideen had claimed credit. It was speculated that DM was a subsidiary of Indian Mujahideen (IM) that had surfaced during the last year as most functionaries of the most convenient whipping boy SIMI. In the case of Lahore bus blasts, Islamabad’s spin doctors unveiled a previously unheard of group, Ansar Wa Mohajir as most activities of JeT and JuM, including charitable initiatives like primary schools and hospitals, had come to a standstill.

 

The contrived pseudo fiction peddled by the two adversaries does confirm one thing. Both India and Pakistan have become failed states, desperately looking for means to hide their gross failures. Maybe, it is time to revisit some basic concepts that led to their founding.

 

Abdur Rashid Turabi, chief of Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), a popular outfit in Pakistan-administered Kashmir has he said that India itself might have done the Mumbai carnage to justify its aggression against Pakistan. That may be far-fetched, albeit not dismissible out of hand. In any case, the ‘official’ presence of director Ram Gopal Verma on the ‘location’ does point to some role for expert graphic artists of Bollywood. They seem to be manufacturing evidences in the attrition game ongoing at monstrous cost to the public.