Police should investigate impartially.
The arrest of six men from Delhi, Bihar and Chennai on the strong suspicion of their collective activities as a pan-India module or cell of the Indian Mujahideen terrorist outfit is not sufficient to prove the charges against them. The police must be allowed the space to diligently gather and collate evidence and present this to the courts as a cogent whole, as per their duty, without interference from political and influential quarters. The charges are of an extremely serious nature. The six — along with their supposed mastermind Yasin Bhatkal, who slipped out of the net — are alleged to be crucially involved in Pune’s German Bakery case, the Jama Masjid blast in Delhi and the explosion in Bengaluru’s Chinnaswamy Stadium.
The state of affairs in next-door Pakistan — where on Wednesday a leader of the influential religio-terrorist outfit Jamat-ud-Dawa declared in a Lahore speech that it would convert Pakistan into a “Taliban state”, and the well-documented proximity of this outfit to the Pakistan Army — can leave us in no doubt that a systematic effort is on to subvert susceptible minds in this country and direct them towards terrorist goals across India.
Deccan Chronicle, December 2
