Column

Here’s a special quiz: for DNA readers. Which two of the following four men are terrorists: David Coleman Headley; Tahawwur Hussain Rana; Vilas Pandurang Warak; Rahul Mahesh Bhatt?

American investigators working for the FBI think it’s the first two which is why they have been arrested. On the other hand India’s own National Investigating Agency (NIA) seems to think it’s Warak and Bhatt who are the offenders and has been treating them accordingly.

Perhaps this is not a time for levity considering that issues of national security are involved, but the fact remains that the NIA has treated Rahul Bhatt and Vilas Warak with a callousness which goes far beyond mere insensitivity. And in the manner in which it has handled these two young men you can see why the NIA fails in its primary duty which is to investigate terror plots and if possible, foil them.

There is no doubt that it has failed in this job. Rana — who has a Canadian passport — was in India for three weeks in November 2008 and left days before 26/11.During his stay here he visited five cities: Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Pune and Kochi.

Headley — who has a US passport —also visited these five cities; in fact, he made as many as nine trips into India between 2006 and 2009, but neither he nor Rana were on the radar of the NIA as possible suspects who needed to be monitored. Yet, they were under the FBI’s surveillance — Headley for as long as a year before he was arrested last month and Rana for about half that time.

Intelligence gathering relies on a network of informers, some of whom would be part of an agency like NIA, but many more of whom would be freelancers or people on retainershipwho provide information for payment or for reasons of patriotism.

While the first kind, the freelancers, are essential for a continuous flow of information within groups likely to cause problems, there can be a huge informal network of the latter, citizens who out of nationalistic altruism will report suspicious activities on one, and only one condition. That condition being that there has to be a responsible and responsive person in the police or the NIA who will listen carefully, take notes diligently and ensure anonymity.

Instead of that we get a sordid spectacle of Rahul Bhatt and Vilas Warak being hounded by the NIA, their names being made public so that the media could harass them, and worse, being treated as if they were under some kind of cloud. And why?Because they had the misfortune of meeting Headley by chance and getting to know him. How were they to guess that Headley had a criminal past or evil future intentions when the NIA itself had no clue ?

In the US or the UK, the identity of witnesses is never revealed. A press release would have merely said “Two men are helping the police in investigations.”

If Bhatt and Warak were volunteering information to the FBI or Scotland Yard, they would not have been summoned to the police station in the full glare of publicity; instead plainclothesmen would have visited them in their homes and made discreet inquiries.You can’t blame the media for highlighting a story; it is up to the authorities to make sure the media does not get the story in the first place.

In a while the frenzy of the current excitement will die down and Rahul Bhatt and Vilas Warak will get back to their normal lives. But will the ordeal they have gone through encourage other people to volunteer information to the police or NIA in the future?

Would you go out of a patriotic sense of duty to report suspicious activities if there was a good chance that you yourself would be treated as a suspect? Is anyone now surprised why our intelligence agencies never gather any intelligence?

The writer is a commentator on social affairs