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Political Notes

	February 04, 2008

Criminal-turned-politician MP arrested



Criminal-turned-politician mafia-don and Samajwadi Party MP in the Lok Sabha Atiq Ahmad was arrested by a special team of Delhi Police in New Delhi on Jan. 31. Named in as many as 46 cases of heinous crimes like murder, kidnapping and extortion, Ahmad was on the most-wanted list of UP police.



Giving details of the catch, Delhi police said Ahmed was arrested near Ghalib Apartments on Parwana Road in Pitampura on Thursday. “We had received a tip-off from an informer that he would be coming to Ghalib Apartments to meet somebody. We laid a trap there and arrested him,” said DCP (special cell) Alok Kumar.



Ahmad had managed to evade arrest in the sensational murder of BSP legislator Raju Pal in Allahabad in 2005 and was declared an absconder in July 2007. The police had even announced a reward of Rs 20,000 for Ahmad who was expelled from the Samajwadi Party but remained an MP from Phulpur constituency in Uttar Pradesh.





Terror camps, Pak flags in Karnataka jungles



Terrorist training camps may be closer to home than the distant mountains in Pakistan. This chilling evidence came to light during the interrogation of three Islamist radicals arrest¬ed recently - Riyazuddin Nasir alias Mohammed Ghouse, Asadullah Abu Bakar and Mohammed Asif.



The investigators have unearthed a thick forest area border¬ing Dharwad and Uttara Kannada districts of Karnataka, which was used to train terrorists in the use of firearms. The three youth arrested by anti-terror police in Hubli and Davanagere a fort¬night ago allegedly received weapons training in these woods which are surrounded by religious shrines.



Sources said this could well be the first time that a ter¬rorist camp used by self-proclaimed Islamist fundamentalists has been detected in southern India, where a spate of terror attacks in the last few years, such as the ones in Hyderabad’s Mecca mosque and the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, have sensitized police to Islamist terrorism. It not only exposes a serious chink in the country’s intelligence armour, but also opens the door to getting answers on why and how Bangalore en¬gineer Kafeel Ahmed transformed into the Glasgow bomber and his brother, Dr Sabeel Ahmed, joined in the UK terror plot.



Not only does it prove that the terrorist network is wider in southern India than imagined, it also establishes links bet¬ween various terror attacks across the country, including the sensational strikes at IISc in Bangalore, Ajmer and Mecca Masjid of Hyderabad.



In a related development, the Union Government informed the Supreme Court on Feb. 1 there appears a serious problem in the working of the prisoner-exchange policy between India and Pakis¬tan as the neighbour was always eager to accept hardcore crimi¬nals, including terrorists, probably for sending them back.



Additional solicitor-general Amarendra Saran told a bench comprising Justices B N Agrawal and G S Singhvi that Pakistan was not accepting other prisoners charged with minor offences or those detained for straying into Indian territory.



Saran said in view of the problems that had cropped up in the smooth working of the existing framework on the exchange of prisoners, the Centre was focusing on redrafting fresh policy guidelines on this issue. The Centre was given two months time for the purpose.











Sethu project a security threat : Coast Guard



Adding a new twist to the controversial Sethusamudaram project, the Indian Coast Guard chief has said that the project is bound to have security implications as the narrow shipping canal will be vulnerable to threats from non-state actors in the region.



The Director General of Coast Guard, Vice Admiral R F Con¬tractor, said on Thursday, Jan. 31 that threats arising from the project have been examined, but additional security measures will be put in place once the canal opens for shipping traffic.



“It is a major project and there are bound to be security threats. If a freeway is opened up for ships to transit, things like piracy can take place,” said Contractor, speaking to the media a day ahead of the 31st anniversary of the Coast Guard.



His statement comes a week after Navy Chief Admiral Sureesh Mehta raised concerns that the canal may not be useful for inter¬national merchant shipping traffic as it is designed only for smaller vessels. Mehta’s statement had raised a controversy, with the AIADMK and the BJP using it in their argument against the project.



Referring to threats from the LTTE, Contractor said that the proximity of the channel to Sri Lankan waters is also a matter of deep concern. “Close proximity with a neighbouring country with which we already have a problem” is also a matter of concern, he said. “It is a narrow channel and if a ship has a problem (while crossing), that also has to be sorted out,” he added.