Today’s encounter of dreaded criminals: Asad Ahmed and his aide, Ghulam, the killers of Umesh Pal, in Jhansi, is the vindication of the fact that, how the long arm of the law which had proven to be the escape route for the criminals, made increasingly impotent by the political patronage, is not only sought to be turned lethal but also its arm is expediently shortened to ensure that justice no more gets delayed, far less denied, on account of its myriad scope for subversion as well as their circumvention.
Vivekanand Jha Ranchi: As I watched the video of police encounter of Asad Ahmed, a young mafia don, the son of the dreaded Mafia don Atique, after 49 days of the murder of Umesh Pal, the witness of Raju Pal murder case, I could palpably feel that law has begun to have its teeth now; the very sense of the institutionalised doctrinaire belief that ‘ law will take its own turn’, the maxim which meant that the guilty will seldom be punished, has completely ceased to have its salliance with people, at least in Uttar Pradesh today. However, as I watched the anchor dishing out another information pertaining to another fugitive Shaishta Parveen, the mother of Asad and wife of Atique Ahmed, another accomplice to the whole game plan of murdering Umesh Pal, contemplating about her surrendering before the law, in the wake of the encounter of her son, the thought struck me like a thunderbolt: how the fear of getting killed is the mightiest fear on earth. Why, I thought, this idea of surrender never struck Shaistha Parveen when she has been on run all along; however, the moment the news of her son being eliminated reached her, she has begun contemplating of her surrender? Indeed the answer was obvious to me: The fear of death looms large now on the horizon of Uttar Pradesh for the dreaded criminals who, unless before Yogi has been elevated as the chief minister, were operating with fullest of impunity. Significantly, the task force constituting twelve members for tracking the assassins, were on the trail of Asad and Ghulam, for almost forty nine days before they were killed in an encounter today, on Thursday between 12.30 p. m. and 1.p.m. while escaping in their bikes, despite being asked to surrender, they began firing at the police force.
Interestingly, my eyes also caught the attention of the comments of opposition leaders, of whom Mahua Moitra was the first whose comment was along the expected line, ‘ The lawlessness has come to stay in Uttar Pradesh, where police has replaced the court’. She, ever fond of giving names, invented one for Yogi Adityanath too, as she did for Modi in the past, ‘ Mr Thoko’, as she had questioned the prime minister in parliament in the past, ‘ Raja tor Kapur koi'( Where is your cloth emperor). Alas, I wondered, Mahua would have been equally forceful to take her own government’s omissions and commissions to task when, far from preventing the Islamists from going ahead with pelting of stones, the government was seen to be procrastinating on taking actions against the guilty. Unequivocally, it is the time that Hindus should take such hypocrite politicians to task; their open cohabitations with Islamists is an open secret or else, why they question the encounter of mafia dons who were absconding from law and, when confronted, they opened fire on police force? India, for last seven decades, was held hostage to the policy of Muslim appeasement, which forms the building block of the politics of Congress, Communists and almost all the regional parties except Shiv Sena. It is this blatant partisanship of taking sides of criminals for the vote bank politics which must stop forthwith. Hindus, splintered as they are along the caste lines, served as the fodder for these political parties to take them lightly. This hitherto prevailing equation must change, and the fight of Yogi Adityanath against Mafia in Uttar Pradesh is the new resolve of India to emerge out of the shadow of its characteristic pusillanimity.
Until before 2014, India’s characteristic unmanliness was apparent to the world community. In 2012 when Nirbhaya incident had rocked the nation, the national fury found its expression in the Candle Light March to Rajghat. Such a hilarious scenario was witnessed even during the Mumbai killings in 2008, when terrorists from Pakistan unleashed mayhem in Mumbai for consecutive three days. And what was the policy response: To take the Candle March for Peace. Ironically, what was needed was the retaliation, but what the world community saw was an appeal for peace– and to whom? The ones who believed in unleashing terror to kill the people. Small wonder then, the designation of ‘ Soft State’ was labelled to India. In fact, even the terrorists knew that India, instead of retaliating with might, would take out the Candle March to appeal for peace. This was the spineless India on full display. Also, the state policy of tackling Islamist terrorists and criminals with softness, with a prevalent fear psychosis, as if the stern measures would offend India’s Muslims, contributed towards India’s lack of resolve to deal sternly with terrorism–both within and without. Significantly, the bomb blasts were the regular feature in the country. India had no pre-emptive policies to deal with terrorism, especially the Islamic terrorism. Worse still, Rahul Gandhi’s idiotic comment that, ‘ It was Hindu terrorism which concerned him more than Muslim terrorism’, tells its own sorry saga of Congress’ decades old policy of Muslim appeasement.
Balakot incident gave India a respectability which the nation had lacked all along. The air attack conducted to avenge the loss of forty of its soldiers killed in the highway of Kashmir, was somehow unprecedented in the history of independent India. ‘ Ghar mein ghush kar mara’, prime minister Modi’s comment in the wake of Balakot strike made India a confident nation. However, the domestic situation too needed an overhaul: The Muslim terrorism needed to be dealt with an iron hand. Yogi Adityanath has given a new direction to the national politics by openly declaring a war on Mafia. Small wonder then, ever since his ascendancy, the encounter of criminals, bulldozing of the illegal houses –the spectacle the nation has witnessed in Prayagraj and other places where the houses of Mafia dons like Atique’s were already demolished. Whereas the opposition has been strongly critical of such moves, which might appear arbitrary, yet this action was long overdue: K V Krishna Aiyar’s observation that’ Justice delayed is the justice denied’, had almost become the institutionalised norms in India. The criminals openly operated with impunity and innocent people ended up as their victims. Thus this new daringness exhibited by the UP police, is the new found confidence of the state to deal with crime and criminals. YogiककAAक Adityanath’s observation in State Assembly, ‘ Mitti mein mila denge’, has already injected dread in the hearts of the dreaded criminals who hitherto seldom feared law. More so, with the open encounter of Asad Ahmed and his aide Ghulam, the credibility of UP police has increased manifold. Unequivocally, the ‘Zero tolerance policy’ of the state is ostensibly getting lots of traction with the common men and women of Uttar Pradesh. This, obviously will begin reverberating across India, with people from other states too shall begin demanding the replication of the steps in improving the law and order situation, especially in Bihar and Bengal, where the institutionalised Muslim appeasement policy has been adversely reflecting on law and order situation. Hence against the backdrop, Yogi Adityanath’s bold initiative is the vindication of new confidence of India beginning to look beyond the Hindu-Muslim syndrome to identify the criminals as one community and bring them to task. This step was long overdue in the republic.
Vivekanand Jha, an
Author, Academician and a Public Intellectual.
