FALLING IN LINE

The National Investigation Agency’s loss of credibility

- NILEENA MS

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THE SENIOR ADVOCATE A MARIARPUTHAM was all set for an important day in court. He was to appear in front of a division bench of the Supreme Court on 15 April 2015, representing the National Investigation Agency, India’s primary anti-terror task force, against five accused in one of the nation’s largest terror attacks. On 29 September 2008, during the Islamic holy month of Ramzan, two bombs concealed in a motorcycle had exploded in the Muslim-dominated town of Malegaon in north-western Maharashtra, killing six people and injuring more than a hundred. Another bomb had gone off on the same day, near a mosque in the Muslim-majority Sukka Bazaar area of Modasa, a town in Gujarat.

The accused were all members of a Hindu militant group called Abhinav Bharat, linked to several senior Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh leaders. By the time Mariarputham got up to address the judges on the case seven years later, Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party—the political wing of the RSS—had been in power at the centre for nearly a year. The argument that Mariarputham had prepared for court that day was interrupted.