Babloo’s ex-landlord heads Nepal probe

Contrary to the impression being sent out over the last 36 hours, this airport isn’t exactly a small-town airstrip with no security apparatus. It caters to more than a dozen international carriers including Thai, Qatar, Gulf, PIA and the Indian Airlines. And it’s also the most preferred south Asian route for smugglers.

What lies at the heart of thelaxity in security is the alleged corruption in the Nepal police especially the top brass who enjoy political patronage.The government of India has often cautioned Nepal about the presence of different militant groups, mainly the ISI, either based, or in transit in Kathmandu. Recently, according to a report in Himal magazine, Indian authorities had wanted to handle the security aspect there, a suggestion Nepal considered an infringement of its sovereignty.

Nepalese authorities claim that the militant groups there are only interested in Kathmandu as a base to coordinate with their bosses in Dubai or Islamabad. Both smugglers and militant groups are suspected to have made huge investments in Nepal in the tourismcivil aviation and hotel industryas well as in garment factories.

Still, yesterday’s hijacking is a dramatic shift in their nature of operations. Incidentally, there has been just one hijacking case in Nepal in the past: a domestic flight bound to Kathmandu from Biratnagar was hijacked by the thenbanned and now ruling Nepali Congress activists who had taken Rs 40 lakh in Indian currency to wage an armed revolution against the monarchy. And G P Koirala was the mastermind behind that plan.

Another worrying aspect in Nepal is the growing nexus between politicians and the smugglers of gold. Whether the terrorists on board IC 814 have links with the smuggling syndicate is not yet clear but without doubt, they are the beneficiaries of the corruption rampant in the senior level police setup.

About five dozen police personnel at the airport, considered the most lucrative posting, are handpicked by the police chief himself, either independently or on politicians’ orders. Airport authorities say that there are quite a few cases of police officials escorting suspected smugglers right upto the tarmac with the help of Customs and airport staff.

So it’s no surprise that Singh, who heads the probe, was Babloo’s landlord. Babloo, who assumed Nepali citizenship and got a Nepali passport in the name of ArunKumar Agarwal had approached Singh through Mirza Dilshad Beg, a Member of Nepal’s Parliament and supposed to be the chief executive of the D-company in Nepal.

Beg was assassinated allegedly by his rival Chhota Rajan group in Kathmandu in June 1998 but he had always kept the police and the politicians on his right side. In fact, instructions for the murder of Customs officer L D Arora in Uttar Pradesh in 1992 are said to have been sent from this house. Arora, sources said, was becoming too “inconvenient” for Dawood’s associates in India. This only adds to Singh’s vulnerability and casts a doubt over the outcome of the probe which is expected to submit in two weeks time.

(Political analyst Yubaraj Ghimire, a former Associate Editor with The Indian Express, is now with the BBC’s Nepali Service in London).