‘Rajasthan police invented plot to keep away Rushdie'
Pravin Swamy is the reporter.
Has the Rajasthan Police thought what is the image of India due to this escapade? Especially after India under Rajiv Gandhi was the first country to ban Rushdie's book and brought attention to the book.Mumbai Police say they have no record of alleged hit-men sent to kill him
Local intelligence officials in Rajasthan invented information that hit men were preparing to assassinate eminent author Salman Rushdie in a successful plot to deter him from attending the Jaipur Literature Festival, highly placed police sources have told The Hindu.
{Note: Its not Mumbai underworld but INC run Rajasthan State government that came up with the cooked up story and they were successful.}
Sources in the festival administration told The Hindu that Rajasthan Police intelligence officials had claimed that the threat to Mr. Rushdie came from two underworld hit men who they identified as “Altaf Batli” and “Aslam Kongo.” The intelligence officials also said an Islamist terrorist, Saqib Hamid Nachan, was suspected of financing the plot to assassinate Mr. Rushdie.
{Sounds like C grade Bollywood movie names!}
“I received a call from one of Mr. Rushdie's friends on Friday, asking about these names,” said a senior officer of the Mumbai Police, who deals with organised crime. “I thanked him for giving me something to laugh about.”
The officer said the Mumbai Police's dossiers on organised crime figures had no reference to individuals who might be using “Altaf Batli” and “Aslam Kongo.” “We've had a Salim Langda [‘the lame'], a Salim Kutta [‘the dog'], a Salim Tempo [‘truck'] and a Javed Fawda [‘the spade'] — but no ‘Kongo.' Lots of Batlis [‘bottles'], but no Kongos.”
{Yup. C grade Bollywood script!}
The third name is of a former Students Islamic Movement of India leader from the village of Padgah, 80 km from Mumbai, who remains under 24-hour covert surveillance, though he has been acquitted of the past charges of participating in terrorist attacks in 2002-2003.
Maharashtra's Director-General of Police P.K. Subramaniam went on record to deny that his force had provided information on a potential threat to Mr. Rushdie. “When we had no information that gangsters or paid assassins from [the] Mumbai underworld had planned to eliminate Mr. Rushdie,” he told journalists in Mumbai, “how could we have shared it with anybody”?
Intelligence sources in New Delhi said no threat to Mr. Rushdie's life had been reported to the Multi-Agency Centre, the Intelligence Bureau's hub at which all terrorism-related threats are discussed at high-level afternoon meetings.
{Wonder if this is the famous afternoon chai-biskoot sessions of super cops! Did they know that Rajasthan Police was feeding fasle info to the organisers? Or they would know only if its reported by someone!}
Mr. Rushdie cancelled his appearance at the Festival, saying he had been told that “paid assassins from the Mumbai underworld” were seeking to kill him.
