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Journalism of Courage
At the heart of the controversy surrounding the arrest and subsequent release of an under-22 Jammu and Kashmir team cricketer,Parvez Rasool,and the police interrogation of his room mate,Mehrajuddin, over the suspicion of the presence of explosives in a kit bag in their room at the Karnataka State Cricket Associations Chinnaswamy Stadium on Saturday,is a brand new,privately outsourced,anti-terrorism system put in place by the KSCA at the stadium.
The new mechanised system triggered off a panic wave that resulted in the Bangalore police arresting Rasool. But preliminary chemical analysis of the kit bag and the KSCA Club House room of the two cricketers by forensic experts have revealed no trace of the military explosive material C4 or any other explosive substances.
On Saturday morning,the new sophisticated remote explosive detector and handheld explosives detectors deployed at the stadium had reportedly indicated the presence of traces of C4, an explosive mixture containing RDX, in Rasools kit bag.
The new anti-terrorism security services at the Chinnaswamy Stadium has been contracted to a Hyderabad-based private firm,Brio Macro Security Pvt Ltd,who are channel partners of the US-based Homeland Security Strategies Inc. Among the devices deployed by the security agency are programmed remote explosive detectors that claim to pick up traces of explosive substances from distances upto a few kilometres,and handheld detectors that zero in on the explosive material.
Police and forensics experts in Bangalore have now sought scientific validation checks on the explosives detection system. The KSCA security officials said they had not tested the equipment on actual explosive materials. We are asking for these tests to check if there are some errors, a senior police official said.
Bangalore police commissioner Shankar Bidari said the kit bag has now been sent for detailed forensic analysis. When the police entered the room,the instruments pointed towards a bag but no explosives were found in it. Even then,as a measure of precaution,we took the person possessing the bag into custody. His antecedents are being verified from the Jammu and Kashmir police, Bidari had stated on Saturday following the arrest of Rasool.
The scare over the suspected presence of explosive material at the Chinnaswamy Stadium came hours ahead of the Diwali evening Champion League 20-20 cricket matches. The start of the first match was delayed by nearly two hours on account of the scare.
The Jammu and Kashmir under 22 cricket team,that arrived on Friday afternoon by a Kingfisher flight from Bhubaneswar to play a C K Nayudu Trophy game against Karnataka on October 21,following a game against Orissa at Cuttack between October 12 and 15,have been moved out of the KSCA Club House facility to a private hotel following the incident.
The Jammu and Kashmir Cricket Association has accepted an apology tendered by the KSCA over the incident and have decided to honour their October 21 fixture here.
Rasool, who hails from Bijbehara in Jammu and Kashmir,is considered among the most promising batsman emerging from the Valley and has played age-group level cricket for the state for the last five years.
Rasool,during his questioning by police officials here,said he had opened the sealed cricket kit bag given by the Jamp;K Cricket Association on October 8 when the 15-member team began its journey to play the C K Nayudu Trophy games in Orissa and Karnataka. Rasool has said that the bag only contained cricket equipment.
Police sources in Bangalore said the kit bags were procured by the JKCA in February this year. Sources said that verifications of the cricketers credentials by intelligence counterparts in Kashmir had cleared Rasool,and Mehrajuddin a native of Baramulla in Sopore district.
