Everyone likes a happy ending — particularly us Indians. So between Delhi Police Commissioner Y.S. Dadwal’s men and Maharashtra Director General Anami Roy’s sleuths, all the serial bomb blasts since 2005 have been solved. But before we indulge in another round of backslapping, we must make public penance before our neighbours if we believe every word dished out by the Delhi and Mumbai police. If the Sankatmochan temple blast was carried out by the now-deceased Atif Ameen and gang, then Home Secretary Madhukar Gupta and his predecessors must apologise to their Bangladeshi counterparts for demanding that HUJI militants Bashiruddin, Mustafiz and Zakaria, who studied at Deoband, be handed over to New Delhi for the Varanasi carnage. Similarly, if the Hyderabad serial blast was carried out by the Azamgarh group, then the Ministry of External Affairs must seek the pardon of their Pakistani counterparts for asking for the custody of so-called HUJI mastermind Shahid Bilal at the bilateral terror mechanism meetings.

In fact, there are so many masterminds that even M.K. Narayanan, who believes in maintaining huge terrorist charts with Pakistani links, would be confused after he returns from the US. Analysis of the Delhi and Mumbai police claims this week reveals an almost indecent haste in closing the serial blasts file. It is as if the big picture is deliberately being missed, Certainly, this suits the UPA as they seek to bury a politically sensitive issue; while the BJP would like to drag out these investigations so that the fear of terror reigns supreme on the election-eve, to give credibility to their “save India” slogan.

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