Goa Blast case: New wave of anti-Hindu inquisition in Goa

I understand that a blast took place at 9.30 pm on Friday night (16 October, 2009) when explosives allegedly kept in a scooter went off on a busy street in Margao, Goa. The Goa Police is desperately trying to implicate the so-called ‘Right-wing group’ Sanatan Sanstha in this unfortunate incident. ‘Right-wing group’ is the standard Congress and Police terminology for all the Hindus of India including all the Dharmacharyas and Shankaracharyas! It has been widely reported that the Goa Police are also trying to link this blast with the Malegaon blast accused Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur who is still in custody in Maharashtra for the last several months. The whole country knows that the ATS in Maharashtra have so far failed miserably in their attempt to foist a terrorist criminal case on Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur. As a former civil servant belonging to the Indian Administrative Service, I have rich experience in dealing with the problems of crime and law and order. I am also familiar with the ways of the police, particularly when they try to dance to the tunes of the political executive — the party in power — and how they go out of their way to manufacture or foist cases in a blatantly illegal manner upon the innocent political rivals of the party in power.

The Hindu Dhimmis like Sharad Pawar, Union Agriculture Minister and the Chief of NCP and former Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister R R Patil have been unconstitutionally demanding the imposition of a government ban on vibrant Hindu Organisations like Sanatan Sanstha and Bajarang Dal during the last 2 years.

Deputy Inspector General of Goa Police Ravindra Yadav has stated in a press conference yesterday that as yet there is no proof whatsoever that Sanatan Sanstha has any involvement at all in this blast and that none of its members have been arrested.

I am of the view that the Congress Party and the NCP in Goa are conspiring to strangulate the authentic and truthful Hindu religious and cultural organisation like Sanatan Sanstha today in the same manner in which the treacherous Nehru Congress Government tried to asphyxiate the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS) in November 1949. After Nehru and the communist V K Krishna Menon led this proud nation to a humiliating defeat against China in 1962, the shame-faced Nehru under furious public pressure invited the patriotic RSS to participate in the Republic Day Parade on 26 January, 1963.

Nearly 1 year ago when the Thane Blasts took place in Maharashtra, the Maharashtra Government wanted to falsely implicate the Sanatan Sanstha in that blast without any foundation in fact. Now a similar attempt is being made by the Government to some how close the Sanatan Sanstha in Goa.

I spoke to the Sanstha spokesperson Abhay Vartak over the telephone this morning. He told me in categorical terms: ‘It’s a conspiracy by Goa politicians against our peaceful Hindu religious organisation. There was no objectionable material recovered by the police from our Goa ashram. Yet, the Goa government is trying to defame us by comparing us to Lashkar-e-Taiba.’

Sanatan Sanstha spokesperson Abhay Vartak has also said that the Goa police did not record any ‘panchanama’ and came to the ashram without a search warrant. He has also said that the police seized some computer hard disks, but refused to make a ‘hash value’ report of the seized disks. The hash value report is very important to safeguard the hard disks so that it cannot be tampered with; otherwise, anyone can illegally put objectionable material in the disks and blame the Sanatan Sanstha for it. I am firmly of the view that the Government of Goa is targeting to close the Sanatan Sanstha without any scruples for the Rule of Law.

I am amused to see the infantile allegation made by the Goa Home Minister Ravi Naik to this effect:  ‘The explosives may have got triggered before being planted by the Sanatan activists at a designated spot. They wanted to disturb a traditional Diwali-eve event ‘Narakasur’ effigy competition in the heart of the town as the blast took place only a few metres away from the competition venue.’ No responsible Minister can ever get voluntarily enmeshed in the mire of deeper conceptual confusion.

Sanatan Sanstha has denied all the allegations of the Goa Police and the Goa Home Minister terming them as ‘totally baseless and unfounded and as a travesty of truth’.  In a statement Sanatan Sanstha has said: ‘Based on searches conducted at the ashram in Ramnathi, the institution is being portrayed as an accused in Margao blast. Media should not jump the gun and should wait for proper judicial process to get over. Sanatan Sanstha will never encourage or support such activities in its ashram. The disciples have cooperated with the police during their search of the ashram on 16 October and will continue helping police in their job.’

In these very columns in News Today on 11 February 2009, in an article titled Guantanamo Bay in Maharashtra – I, I had observed as follows: ‘The Sonia-Congress led UPA government in Maharashtra is mischievously and viciously using the ATS as a political instrument to foist cases on Hindu political and Hindu religious leaders.  Like the CBI, which I have several times described in these columns as disgraceful, which is being used on a daily basis by the Congress to foist criminal cases on their political opponents, the ATS in Maharashtra is also functioning as a political instrument in Maharashtra.  … It is a matter of time before the ATS declares the Sangh Pariwar as the biggest progenitor of terror in India.  They are capable of politically manufacturing new ‘revelations’ to suggest that, if SIMI is to be banned, so also must be Bajarang Dal, VHP, ABVP, RSS and eventually BJP.  Finally, the lethal fact that the government will have neither the gumption nor credible and clinching evidence to do so is quite another matter.  But there is no doubt whatsoever that the ATS in Maharashtra is working round the clock to prove the equation of Islamic and ‘Hindu’ terror.’

The legitimate and well-founded fears expressed by me as an independent journalist asserting my sacred, inviolable, and indivisible right to both freedom of speech and freedom after speech

(!!) in these columns on 11 February, 2009 have been fully vindicated by the verdict of the Designated Judge Y D Shinde, presiding over the Special MCOCA Court, on 31-7-2009. This learned Judge has dropped the provisions of the stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) invoked against Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and others declaring that none amongst them are part of an organised crime syndicate.

I view the recent Goa Government invasion of the Sanatan Sanstha Ashram at Ramnathi near Margao as an organised part of the larger programme of renewal and return of The Holy Inquisition of the Hindus launched by the Portuguese Catholic Church from 1540 onwards and lasting till 1812. To quote the words of the Christian historian, Dr T R de Souza: ‘At least from 1540 onwards, and in the island of Goa before that year, all the Hindu idols had been annihilated or had disappeared, all the temples had been destroyed and their sites and building material was in most cases utilized to erect new Christian Churches and chapels. Various viceregal and Church council decrees banished the Hindu priests from the Portuguese territories; the public practices of Hindu rites including marriage rites, were banned. THE GOAN INQUISITION IS REGARDED BY ALL CONTEMPORARY PORTRAYALS AS THE MOST VIOLENT INQUISITION EVER EXECUTED BY THE PORTUGUESE CATHOLIC CHURCH.’

The writer is a retired IAS officer

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