Amit Shah - The New Mr. Tough

India’s internal security landscape is set for a radical shift under the new Union home minister

- Uday Mahurkar

The image of Amit Shah as a hawkish, no-nonsense internal security minister was cast 11 years ago, long before he moved out of his office in the BJP party headquarters on 6 Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Marg into Room No. 104 in New Delhi’s North Block on June 1 this year.

It was the evening of July 26, 2008, and 21 bombs had gone off in Ahmedabad, in the city’s buses, hospitals and public places. In the space of four hours, the blasts had killed 58 people and injured over 200 others. At around 6.30 pm, as panic-stricken citizens reeled in shock, state home minister Amit Shah came on TV channels and assured the people that he would bring the culprits to book. Later that night, Shah, then Gujarat’s youngest home minister at 43, reiterated the pledge to his boss, Chief Minister Narendra Modi. The next few days were hectic, spent in meetings with state police and Intelligence Bureau officials.

Twenty days later, there was a breakthrough. One of the agencies reported the arrest of a suspect, a maulvi from Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh. He was flown to Ahmedabad in a state government aircraft sent from Gujarat. His interrogation unravelled a terrorist cell headed by Riyaz and Yasin Bhatkal of the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). The Bhatkals had set up a terrorist outfit called the Indian Mujahideen (IM), which had carried out a wave of bombings across India, in Lucknow, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Jaipur and Delhi in 2008. Intelligence tip-offs from the Gujarat police led Delhi police to Batla House which led to the eponymous encounter where two alleged IM terrorists, said to be involved in the Delhi bombings, were gunned down.