But Modi did prove at the Karkare home in Dadar on Thursday that there is no stopping him, even away from home turf:  He simply drove down there after the bereaved officer’s kin thrice declined requests to meet him, while Hemant’s bullet-riddled body lay in a morgue.

No matter that Modi has been busy heaping mud on the Mumbai ATS that Karkare himself led, once it took the shroud off the Hindutva face of terror in Malegaon. For weeks before the Mumbai terror strike, Modi the vote-catcher, at assembly poll meetings, had been alleging that the same ATS was framing “innocent” army officers to demoralise the Indian army, playing minion to the Congress, even that its arrests did more harm to the country than Pakistan could.

And no matter that his own party, still trying to come to terms with the devastating Malegaon findings, debated hard and chose not to mention Karkare and his dead ATS officers in its condolence resolution on the terror attack.

When he flayed the prime minister’s address to the country soon after the Mumbai terror strike saying it was just not adequate, some of Modi’s saffron comrades like chief minister Prem Kumar Dhumal in Himachal Pradesh, may have openly disgreed with his attitude in a national crisis. But Modi is not known to hold back on free advice — even if he, at times, may appear to need some himself.

Consider: “It seems the UPA government is still not serious about terrorism even after so many terror strikes in the country”, he wrote to the PM when terror gripped Mumbai. This was even while reports were pouring in about the Gujarat coast’s apparent link to the strike. When Modi was writing it, all ten marine police stations that the Centre funded to set up two years ago and handed to his government to maintain and guard the coast, were working only on paper — they have no equipment, not even boats.

... contd.