Story of their Assassins continues........

A year later, on 22 December 2000, the Red Fort in Delhi, a symbol of India’s pluralism and unity, was attacked by the terror group LeT, leaving three soldiers and a civilian dead. More than a terror attack on an iconic monument, it was a serious portent of bigger things to come, including the attack on the Indian Parliament on 13 December 2001, which brought India and Pakistan to the brink of war.

But seven months before the attack on the Parliament, in March 2001, a crisis hit the Vajpayee government that severely embarrassed it. Tehelka (which means ‘sensation’ in Hindi) was a website started by two intrepid journalists, namely, Tarun Tejpal and Aniruddha Bahal, in 2000. On 14 March 2001, videos of its first major sting investigation, called ‘Operation West End’, were broadcast on prime-time television, showing the then BJP president, senior army officers and NDA members accepting bribes from journalists posing as agents and businessmen. The president of the BJP had to resign and subsequently, so did the then defence minister. These events left the BJP red-faced and its alliance on the brink of implosion.

Furthermore, Operation West End and its aftermath prompted Pakistan’s spy agency, the ISI, to contrive a diabolical plan to destabilize India. The ISI was closely monitoring the situation in India and reasoned that if Tejpal and Bahal, the co-authors of Operation West End, were to be assassinated, the blame would fall on the ruling party. Every finger would point to the BJP for the murder of the two journalists who had exposed their party president. In the wake of the raging controversy that would follow, alongside negative public opinion, the tenuous majority that the NDA had in the Parliament would be breached and the NDA government would once again fall. India would be plunged into political instability. Characteristically, only the ISI could have hatched such an insidious conspiracy against India.


To be continued ………….