Confessions From Aseemanand? Who’s Next?

It looks like terrorists are falling over each other to confess to the Samjhauta blast, the Ajmer and other bombings around 2006-07. We barely get past one confession and see any convictions and we have a new one. Predictably Swami Aseemanand’s counsel has stated the confession was made under duress. Even otherwise such confessions are worth nothing unless they are corroborated with indisputable evidence of involvement of those accused in the confession.

So apart from leaking Aseemanand’s confession to the media and once again trying to target Hindu groups to distract from the season of scams, one wonders what other stories the UPA government is now going to come up with. Take a look at these reports:

From Times of India, January 10, 2011: Giving a new twist to the Samjhauta Express blasts case, the counsel of Swami Aseemanand — he is also an accused in the Hyderabad Mecca Masjid explosion case — claimed on Sunday that his client's statement recorded before the metropolitan magistrate of Tis Hazari court in Delhi on December 18, 2010, was obtained under duress. Manvir Rathi, who represents Aseemanand in the Samjhauta blasts case, said he had a one-to-one conversation with him on January 3 when he was produced before special NIA court in Panchkula. Rathi says Aseemanand told him that the CBI had recorded his statement in a Delhi court, but that statement was not voluntary. Read the full report.

In November 2008 SIMI Commander Safdar Nagori was put through a Narco test and had admitted to his involvement, along with others, in almost the same blasts.

The DailyPioneer: November 14, 2008: The report of the narco analysis test on SIMI commander Safdar Nagori and his close aides takes the wind out of the Mumbai Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) probe into the possible involvement of Hindu outfits and Army officers in the Samjhauta Express train blasts.....A joint director-level official of the operations branch of the Intelligence Bureau, responsible for the parallel investigation into the Malegaon blasts, said the Mumbai ATS claims about the involvement of the Sadhvi and Purohit are “far-fetched” as SIMI’s involvement in the case is “beyond reasonable doubt”. ...Apart from the Samjhauta Express and Malegaon blasts, Nagori and his associates have also confessed to SIMI’s role and involvement of Muslims in terror attacks in Mumbai, Aurangabad, Hyderabad, Ajmer and the shootout at the American consulate in Kolkata. Read the full report.

It seems that Congress ministers and even the national investigative agencies have only a one-point agenda - to prove Rahul Gandhi right. First, his travel plans are set to coincide with ministerial announcements on projects like the Niyamgiri one in Orissa. And now, we have the NIA finding a Hindu terror link to corroborate Rahul Gandhi's RSS=SIMI statement. Who knows, Rahul Gandhi might come up with a new angle to the terror attacks and the NIA and ATSs of this country will run looking for newer suspects. Effectively the Congress seems to be flailing its arms at everything to distract from the season of scams.

Will this work? Will the terrible nightmare for the Congress now go away?