>Arun Sukumar’s piece is riddled with factual errors and illogical inferences, a defining hallmark of similar writings that are astonishingly coy to discuss the spectre of Islamist terror. For the last seven years I’ve done my bit to expose the dangers of Hindutava terror in a range of instances — from the Gujarat riots to Malegaon bomb blasts and from RSS extremists to radicals of Abinav Bharat. While several innocent Muslims have been targeted on trumped up terror charges — something I’ve relentlessly exposed, not through armchair analysis but by digging out hard evidence — does it take away from the reality of Islamist jihad? I have attended many seminars and events organised by Muslim organisations and left-leaning NGOs on the subject of Hindutva terror. The constant rhetorical refrain is that all blasts — even those designed to kill only Hindus and target temples — were carried out either by RSS or the IB. The interrogation reports of IM suspects are important because they run counter to significant prosecution cases (like 7/11 blasts) of the very agencies that have prepared these reports. They are also important because they narrate a meticulously detailed and consistent account of a terror plot — even though the suspects were interrogated by different agencies at different time and place — that can easily be verified. What is more facetious? Demanding the full truth through re-investigation and a fair and credible judicial process or dismissing every report, every revelation, every judicial verdict that go against one’s entrenched ideological positions on some technicality or other?
(The writer is founder of the investigative news website >gulail.com )