URGENT

An open letter to:

• Shri Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India
• Shri Rahul Gandhi, ex-President, Indian Notional National Congress [for easy comprehension, audio recording of this letter being sent directly to him]
• All Members of Parliament
• Cabinet Secretary, Government of India
• Director, Research & Analysis Wing (RAW)
• Director, Intelligence Bureau (I.B.)
• Editors of all leading and misleading Indian media houses (online, off-line and over-the-line)

Dear Sa’ar/Ma’am,

1. On 23^rd July 2020, the highly influential and largely ineffectual United Nations Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team (UN-ASS-MT) released its 26^th Report suggesting that there are many Islamic State (ISIL, Daesh) and Al Qaeda cadres living in Kerala and Karnataka and plotting major terrorist attacks in India. This UN-ASS-MT Report is being widely quoted in Indian main-scream media, creating unnecessary panic among the citizenry.

2. As a responsible citizen I write this letter to assure you, as well as my co-citizens, that India has nothing to fear from Islamic State, Al Qaeda, or their affiliated kooks…because it is they who fear India!  I state this with complete confidence, because Al Qaeda founder (late) Shri Osama bin Laden has himself admitted that AI Qaeda is terrified of India. Shri Laden made this admission in August 2005 during an exclusive interview granted to the recondite and highly redacted investigative-speculative reporter (late) Ghatotkacha Hidimbi Bhimasena, who was my dear friend and in some sense a kindred soul.  

3. Alas, Ghatotkacha’s original online post of  his interview with Osama bin Laden has mysteriously disappeared from the Internet—I suspect the Watchers of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate may have cast it into their already Laden Recycle Bin.  Sadly too, Ghatotkacha himself has vanished without trace under mysterious circumstances.

4. Fortunately, however, I have been able to procure an offline copy of this historical 2005 interview in my capacity as Sole Legatee of Shri Ghatotkacha’s worldly and other-worldly assets.  I present below the complete transcript of the interview, and request you to give it wide publicity so that Indian citizens may rest assured that we have nothing to fear from IS, Al Qaeda or any affiliated kooks.

Jai Hind!

India too dangerous for Al Qaeda

[Ghatotkacha Hidimbi Bhimasena, 2005]

Osama bin Laden has announced that Al Qaeda will not attack India. The reason: it’s too dangerous for his terrorists.

In a 12-minute videotaped interview, aired by the little-known Dubai-based Al Nakhli channel last Friday, the tired-looking terror-lord is seen standing on a parched, rubble-strewn plain along with a masked man holding an AK-56 assault rifle. In the backdrop looms what appears to be a bombed-out house. Speaking in a monotone, and with frequent pauses to wave a fist or gaze at the sky, Laden says that he and his followers will continue to target ‘evil’ Western nations and their interests across the world. “But we will shun India,” he declares. “India is a land already destroyed by its own leaders, its people terrorized beyond our reach.”

In Langley, US anti-terror specialists have tentatively identified Laden’s masked companion as Al Kali Feroz Sulfait, an expert in chemical detonators. In Delhi, security agencies say the taped interview appears to be genuine. “Judging from the bombed-out appearance of the rocky slope in the background, the interview could have taken place somewhere in the lawless northwestern districts of Pakistan,” remarked a spokesperson for RAW. However, other officials expressed doubts, albeit off the record. “That interview could have taken place in the equally lawless mining districts ruled by Pappu Yadav in Bihar,” remarked a senior Intelligence Bureau official on conditions of anonymity. “Or perhaps, in a granite quarry in Bhai Thakur’s Bhayandar, in suburban Mumbai. My personal feeling, though, is that the tape was made somewhere amidst the bleak and rocky Delhi-Gurgaon badlands. That derelict building in the backdrop has all the unmistakable marks of a freshly-constructed DDA apartment block.”

Cynical? Undoubtedly so. Indeed, it is precisely this couldn’t-care-a-damn attitude about India’s security that distresses bin Laden. A few excerpts from the interview:

Q: Why have you spared India from attacks by Al Qaeda?

Laden: (with great bitterness). “One cannot set fire to ash. The Indians are deadened to terror. India is a land where the most dreadful atrocities are being carried out on the people daily, not by terrorists but by the government itself. Al Qaeda has tried to strike India, yes…but we failed.

Q: Could you clarify?

Laden: For instance, some years ago we set off a small improvised explosive device and sent a train off a bridge in Kadalundi, in Kerala. Our cadres claimed credit, but what was the Indian response? The railway authorities blamed the disaster on a sudden cyclonic storm that swept in from the sea and blew the train off the bridge — even though the event took place on a calm, cloudless night! As for the media and general public, from the very start they held the railways responsible for the event. They said the bridge was 125 years old and had given way under the weight of the train; they said corrupt railway officials had swallowed all the money meant for the maintenance of the tracks; some even alleged that the locomotive wheels had fallen off because they were fakes, the original wheels having been stolen and sold to scrap dealers. The more Al Qaeda tried claiming credit for the operation, the less credence was given to our claims. People went to the extent of saying the Indian government itself was putting out ‘false’ claims by Al Qaeda to deflect attention from its own failures…(shakes head in disgust)

Q: Was that the only operation you undertook?

Laden: The only direct one, yes. But our associates have undertaken similar successful strikes, only to meet with similar miserable failure in obtaining credit for the strikes. For example, a suicide team of Lashkar-e-Toiba held up a mall in Delhi. But their deaths went in vain…nobody believed the police SWAT team, which finally martyred the Lashkaris. Till today, the Indian public believes the dead Lashkaris were in fact undertrials from Tihar jail, petty pickpockets and the like, whom the Delhi Police planted and got rid off in a stage-managed ‘fake encounter’ at the mall so that they could pick up some rewards and medals.

Q: But this is terrible. Surely there must be another way to strike at India…

Laden: (Shakes fist at sky) I have torn away great tufts from my beard in trying to find another way. No, no, Indians distrust, fear and despise their own rulers far more than they fear us. Despite the most glaring evidence that we have struck, despite our most frantic and sustained efforts to claim responsibility for strikes, they stoutly refuse to believe us. They only blame their own rulers. What can one do? Is it fair on us? Is it just? (Subsides into muttering)

Q: Perhaps Al Qaeda should liberate the suffering people of India from the clutches of their oppressive rulers?

Laden: (wearily) Alas, the rot has spread too deep in India. Terror breathes deep of publicity, for that is its oxygen. How can we derive publicity in a country like India? If we bomb a bazaar, they will blame it on exploding gas cylinders supplied by corrupt government agencies. If we bring down a building or bridge, they will blame it on adulterated cement and steel used by scheming builders and contractors…

Q: Perhaps you could outsource your strikes, send funds and arms and explosives to local Indian squads…

Laden: (trembling with rage) Don’t you understand? Our methods will not work there! Would it not be utterly idiotic to smuggle funds into India from abroad, when Indians can sit in that country and raise Rs. 20,000 crores quite openly and legally like Abdur Rehman Telgi did! (Waves arms about) What is the point in our smuggling arms and explosives into India, when Indian businessmen are legally importing live artillery shells and radioactive wastes as metal scrap? No, no! I have decided that our cadres must not be tainted by India’s cynicism and corruption. Nor must my people’s lives be endangered by live ammunition discarded in public places. Al Qaeda will stay away from India! We cannot attack law and order where none exists…”