ISI's here, ISI's here, Calcutta goes paranoid

ISI's here, ISI's here, Calcutta goes paranoid
SUBRATA NAGCHOUDHURY

CALCUTTA, JANUARY 23: A Union Home Ministry circular was all that it took the West Bengal government to embark on a bizarre mission bordering paranoia. Now every dacoit gang is interrogated for possible ISI links. Tamilians are being scrutinised for LTTE connections. And, believe it or not, Africans are being looked at as possible ``anti-national'' foreign mercenaries.

The Home Ministry's note had warned that the state was being singled out as a possible target of subversive activity by terrorist outfits during the Republic Day celebrations.

The state police virtually pounced on three Tamilians when they were pushed back from Bangkok after discrepancies were allegedly detected in their travel documents on December 20. While they were taken into custody and subjected to prolonged interrogation, messages were flashed to Chennai police to check if they were LTTE cadres. A team is expected in Calcutta soon.

And as ill-luck would have it, these Tamils from Sri Lanka were pushed back by Bangkok to Calcutta ona day when Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee arrived here to address a meeting of engineers. ``The PM was here and the police could not have taken chances,'' was a senior police officer's explanation.

Another officer who had questioned the detenues told The Indian Express that the Tamils had fallen into the trap of unscrupulous agents who had promised to send them to San Francisco. Boarding a Thai Airways flight from Sri Lanka, they went to Hong Kong where there was no problem. But after having reached Bangkok, they were intercepted by the immigration officials and pushed back to Calcutta as they were suspected to be from South India. ``At best they could have been examined for invalid travel documents,'' said the officer and added that ``suspecting them as LTTE cadres was certainly stretching things too far.''

A group of African tourists have been taken into custody too, last week. While a section of officials say that they have no valid travel documents, another says that some ``unusual papers''``which might be used for printing fake currency were seized from them. The police have booked them for ``anti-national'' activity.

Almost everyday, flights from Calcutta to the North-East are being cancelled or detained for long hours following false alarms of ``hijacking.'' For example, the Indian Airlines flight to Dibrugarh was cancelled last week, commandos were brought in and the plane was searched. A couple of days later, a flight to Bagdogra was cancelled.

And when a group of Israeli tourists bound for Bangladesh were refused entry at Dakha and sent back to Calcutta last week, the security here responded in a similar manner taking a close and hard look at the group. They were detained for 48 hours before officials from the Israeli embassy came to their rescue and stood guarantee for their credentials.