Syed Zubair Ahmad
Acting on a tip off from Israel via Thailand, the special cell of Delhi police arrested a senior journalist Syed Mohammad Kazmi in connection to the February 13 attack on the wife of an Israeli diplomat. After that attack the Israeli investigators flied to Delhi to investigate the attack.
Within few minutes after the incident the Israeli government declared that Iran is behind the attack, which Iran denied strongly. Iran was never involved in such activity while Israel has a history orchestrating terrorist attacks on foreign land. The technique which was used in Delhi attack had been used to kill an Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan last year in January. Iran blamed Israel for the killing of its scientist, which Israel never denied.
The question is what could be the motive of the attack and why Israel was so quick in blaming Iran for this attack. The answer is very simple. It is Israel which is mulling an attack on Iran to destroy Iranian nuclear sites. It’s Israel which is crying foul over the Iranian nuclear development and vocally talking of war on Iran. Its Israel which is trying desperately to find an excuse to attack on Iran .Moreover Israel is trying its level best to disrupt Indo-Iranian relationship and pressurizing India to fall in line with American- Israeli interest. Recently India has refused to impose any economic sanction on Iran. The attack on Israeli diplomat and the arrest of Kazmi on a tip off from Israel should be analyzed in this perspective too.
Kazmi, a post-graduate in Persian from Delhi University, has worked as a freelance journalist with DD News. He has also worked as a news reader for a Tehran-based radio station and was recently working as a freelancer for Iranian news agency IRNA. He had covered the Iraq war as a DD correspondent and had a PIB press card for which security clearance from home ministry is required. Kazmi was extensively writing on Israeli atrocities in Palestine in Urdu press since last ten years.
When Kashmiri journalist Iftikhar Gilani was dramatically arrested in 2001 by the then Islam-o- phobic N.D.A. Government in the aftermath of 9/11, there was a lot of hue and cry by some quarters in the media. His only crime was that he happened to be the son in law of the separatist Kashmiri leader Syed Ali Shah Gilani. He was also writing for a Pakistani newspaper .Thanks to some journalist colleagues who took the matter seriously and came out in his support very firmly. Gilani was released after spending six month in Tehar. In past Danish Reyaz a Mumbai-based journalist who was working in Urdu Times, had been arrested in connection to the Local train blasts but later acquitted by the court. His ‘crime’ was that he had visited Iran to attend a conference.
Looking at the previous cases of implicating Muslim youths including journalists it seems that Kazmi was made a scapegoat in the case to please an international lobby. It also seems that government wants to suppress the voice of Urdu press which criticizes the U.P.A government for falsely implicating Muslims in terrorist cases incessantly.
Addressing a press conference the well known advocate and human rights activist N.D. Pancholi said “The Special Cell has a record of filing fabrications on the basis of frivolous documents. Most of the investigation conducted by the Special Cell of Delhi police was found to be false,” Mr. Pancholi also demanded that the case be transferred to another probe agency for fair investigation.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect BH’s editorial policy.
