Months before the 20th anniversary of the horrific 1992 post-Babri Masjid riots, Mumbai’s psyche is once again like that of a city under siege. Muslims and Hindus alike see the clouds of trouble gathering again. Muslims are facing a stony hostility and their champions in the majority community are also a wee bit foxed.

The festival season is on and the city is on edge. An audacious attack by Muslim miscreants on the police and journalists outside Azad Maidan on August 11 has ensured the Mumbaikar expects trouble anywhere, anytime now. The Muslim groups, including the controversial Raza Academy, were protesting the government’s “apathy” towards alleged atrocities against Muslims in Assam and Myanmar.

What is clear so far is this: the trouble was pre-planned, that the police had some idea of imminent trouble (to what extent may be debatable though), and that Maharashtra, for some reason, is being sought to be made the cauldron of communal strife after Assam.

The main trouble lasted for about 30- 40 minutes, somewhere between 3.10 pm and 4 pm at the end of which two people were dead, over 55 injured (most of them policemen), several women constables molested and over 40 vehicles, mostly of the BEST, police and the media, damaged. Eleven of these vehicles had been torched (including OB vans), one SRPF personnel abducted and beaten almost to death and an unknown number of local trains stoned.

Two self-loading rifles (SLR) and one revolver of the police were stolen by the miscreants. The SLRs were recovered and 160 rounds, (yes, unbelievable!), stolen. These had been recovered by August 14 evening. On August 16, one youth from communally sensitive Jogeshwari has been arrested for allegedly stealing one of the SLRs.

What is not clear is this: why did the police not anticipate violence of this magnitude, when as early as 1.30 pm on that day, policemen from Govandi, a far eastern suburb and a minority hotbed, were informing their superiors that restive youth in very large numbers were leaving for Azad Maidan? The railway police force (RPF) was totally absent from action, though all kinds of aggressive behaviour by Muslim youths was visible at Mankhurd, Govandi, Kurla, Ghatkopar and CST stations from early afternoon.

One newspaper report has also said that Nawal Bajaj, additional commissioner of police, special branch, had warned of law and order problems days before the meeting and had called for “heavy police bandobast”.

What is not clear also is this: why did the police not stop crowds at CST station when the permission sought for the meeting was only for 1,500 people?  It seems that the police did have an idea that the crowd would be much bigger.

Sources in the police say the ratio of police presence is 1:10 or 1:20 for public meetings like this. If 800 policemen were posted for the meeting at the venue, the police expected between 15,000 and 17,000 people.

(Mumbai police commissioner Arup Patnaik has said there were between 10,000 and 12,000 people at the meeting). Then where were these people going to come from? Do the police not know the profile of crowds that gather at such meetings?

Why was additional commissioner of police, South region, Krishna Prakash on the dais along with the speakers? “This very officer was at the centre of our allegations in a communal flare-up in Sangli-Miraj in 2008, when hoodlums carrying Pakistani flags got atop his car and shouted anti-Hindu slogans,” recalls Madhav Bhandari, Maharashtra spokesperson of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Prakash is rumored to be close to home minister and Nationalist Congress Party leader RR Patil.

What is not clear is this: how could a trained force of 800 men, led by none less than a joint commissioner of police, (law and order), not control mobs of “outsiders” as everyone is now claiming they were. These outsiders are allegedly the ones that came to the venue last and were armed with petrol cans, iron rods and green flags which they first used to beat up journalists and then switched to lathis seized from policemen.

The organisers of the public meeting claimed these boys outside had started the trouble and the police then tried to prevent the ones inside the Maidan from leaving and that led to a surge which then got out of hand.

In fact, Prashant Nadakar, the Indian Express photographer, who was roughed up, said the police refused to even baton charge the miscreants in the beginning. “The crowd had started to leave when we noticed the trouble. I called up Sayyed Noori (of the Raza Academy) at about 3.11 pm and told him that the boys had gheraoed me and were targeting journalists. Noori appealed to them from the dais to calm down. The police were trying to disperse the mob.” Then, according to Nadkar, the miscreants started kicking the Amar Jawan memorial outside the Maidan, set fire to the police vehicle on the BMC side of the road and started assaulting mediapersons. They asked for cameras to be shut. 

Nadkar sweet-talked the boys who had gheraoed him, distracted them and ran towards the Hutatma Chowk from the Aram Hotel side in the opposite direction. “The shops and buildings near McDonald’s on that side had downed their shutters and locked the gates when they saw the trouble. They did not even allow women returning from offices, who were stranded on the roads and were banging on those gates for help, inside. It was scary,” says Nadkar. (Mobs vandalised McDonald’s also).

Nadkar also said that another photojournalist, Prashant Sawant, who was very badly assaulted, his camera broken and gold chain snatched, was not rescued by the police, but by other Muslims, perhaps senior citizens, who shouted, “Apna bhai hai.”

The key to the incident will be known only if intelligence inputs received by those in authority before Aug 11 are revealed. The chief minister was to be hosting an iftaar party that evening.

Sources said the chief minister had been informed earlier about the activities of a particular minister in his cabinet, and that he should be reined in. Leader of the opposition in the legislative council Vinod Tawde had, late on Saturday itself, asked for “a minister’s” role in granting permission for the meeting to be investigated. It was not confirmed from police officials as to whether the permission had earlier been denied by the police. (Neither Sanjeev Dayal, DG, nor Arup Patnaik responded to repeated calls made by this correspondent.)

Senior journalists say this particular minister is insecure and is perennially in a turf war in the state Congress.

Shamsher Khan Pathan, a former assistant commissioner of police and now patron of the Awami Vikas Party, is also under the scanner. He is one of the 17 who have received summons from the crime branch that is now probing the incident. Pathan, however, told this correspondent on August 17 he had not been called to any police station yet. He said what happened was unfortunate and those who were responsible should be identified and punished. He rejected the suggestion that there was no backlash because the two prime leaders of the Shiv Sena in the state are ill.

The fact that a little known group, Madi Natur-Elm Foundation, an educational institution, had asked for permission for the meeting also points to the fact that the conspirators planned to lull the police into thinking there will be no major muscle-flexing at the meeting. 

While city police chief Patnaik has got a lot of kudos for his skilful containment of the trouble, senior police officers who spoke on condition of anonymity said this was unprecedented. “If the Mumbai police cannot prevent and then control a mob of crudely  armed men, and cannot protect its own women (constables), then what is their proficiency in urban policing?” one officer asked.

Why should Mumbai be a target? Coupled with the mysterious attacks on students from the North-Eastern states in Pune and the blasts in that city some days ago, Maharashtra seems like a target again. Says Arvind Sawant, MLC of the Shiv Sena, “Mumbai is the target because not only has the Congress shielded these criminal communal elements, but also any incident here makes international news. It is the financial capital of the country and the mischief-makers also get the maximum mileage.”

The other aspect that will need investigation is the suspected role of Assam’s AIUDF (All India United Democratic Fund) leader Badruddin Ajmal. He is seen as trying to upstage Tarun Gogoi, chief minister of Assam, and perhaps has a commercial establishment in Mumbai also. The exodus of people from North-Eastern states residing in Pune, Bangalore and perhaps Mumbai also back to their states, gives the Mumbai incident a whole new size and dimension.
If there is a communal conspiracy to cover a whole “east to west” strip of the country in riots and mass upheavals, then the fear expressed by Bhandari of the BJP may have a grain of truth in it.

“The Azad Maidan incident in Mumbai was not an attempt to provoke the police or others. It was a case of Muslims asserting themselves like never before. It seems someone powerful in the Congress wants to make a case for some concessions to Bangladesh. What those are, we don’t know.”