DailyOh! How an alert citizen could have led to don Vikas Dubey’s arrest
At the Mahakal Temple in Madhya Pradesh’s Ujjain this morning, Don Dubey’s terror tenure met its kaal (end). Whether he walked towards the policemen or the policemen managed to reach him is not clear. Some say Vikas Dubey (Kanpur wala) reached the temple and got the guards at the temple to call the police and then some others say that the guard informed the police on his own because he identified Don Dubey.
If the first group of some is correct, then Dubey surrendered; but if the second group of some is right, then the police arrested him.
Ujjain collector Ashish Singh told India Today that Dubey was arrested after he reached the temple at around 8 am. Dubey wanted to enter the temple, so he approached Suresh. Who is Suresh? Well, Suresh runs a shop next to the temple. Dubey asked where the slips permitting entry into the temple were being distributed. Suresh, who had been seeing Dubey’s photos on TV, recognised him. We can’t confirm if Suresh did the facial recognition with Dubey’s mask on or off. Anyway, Suresh alerted the security guard at the temple, but by then, Dubey got a slip worth Rs 250 and entered the temple. He offered his prayers and as he was coming out, he was asked for his ID card. Dubey presented someone else’s card. Then he got into a scuffle with temple security. The security overpowered him and informed the police.
Suresh recognised Dubey but Dubey wasn’t sure people recognised him, so after the police arrived, he shouted, “Main Vikas Dubey huun, Kanpur wala.” Not once, but several times over. At one point, a police officer had to slap Dubey to stop him from introducing himself. A movie don would have defied the pain of the slap and gone ahead doing what he intended to do, but real-life don Dubey shut up as soon as the slap landed on his cheek. What kind of a don does that? The Dubey kind.
Now, dons exist all over the world but the word don traces it origin to Spain. Actually it traces its origin to Spanish word dominus, which means lord or master. In 1800s, the word applied to a Spanish gentleman. It was also later applied to a university teacher, especially a senior member of a college at Oxford or Cambridge.
Later, however, the word don, our Word Of The Day, came to apply to the leader of a group of criminals. We told you yesterday, that Vikas Dubey became a dreaded don after he murdered BJP leader Santosh Shukla in a police station. It is for Dubey now to dread the law.
But terrorists in Kashmir have shown no such fear despite so many of their own men being killed and after murdering hundreds of innocent civilians. In the latest, they murdered Jammu and Kashmir BJP leader Sheikh Waseem Bari, his father and brother, in the Union Territory's Bandipore district. The killings happened at the shop on the ground floor of their home, a stone's throw from a police station.
The terrorists, it seemed, had come to kill Sheikh Waseem but also killed his father Bashir Ahmad and brother Umer Bashir in indiscriminate firing. Ironically, the first arrest in the case is that of Sheikh Waseem’s own security team of eight policemen. All eight were missing when the attack happened.
Political leaders in the Valley have been targeted by terrorists for believing in elections and electoral processes. Remember the abduction of Mufti Muhammad Sayeed’s daughter Rubaiya Sayeed in 1989? Mufti was then the Indian Home Minister. But what you may not remember is the abduction of Congress leader Saifuddin Soz's daughter Nahida. Soz wasn’t a Congress leader then.
He was a leader in Farooq Abdullah’s National Conference.
The kidnapping happened in 1991. To be precise, on February 27, 1991. The Jammu and Kashmir Students' Liberation Front (JKSLF) kidnapped Nahida demanding the release of five terrorists.
But their aim was to derail the talks between the pro-Pakistan Jamait-e-Islami (JeI) and the government of India.
When Rubaiya Sayeed was kidnapped, eight extremists had to be freed to secure her release. To secure, Nahida’s release, the administration had a better plan. The security forces captured the brother of Mukhtar alias Omar Kachroo. Mukhtar was one of the men involved in the kidnapping. The term of negotiation now was, “You turn return ours, we return yours.”
But... It wasn’t going to be easy. Mukhtar called Soz and said if his brother wasn’t released, he would kill Nahida. Soz panicked. He forced the agencies to release Mukhtar’s brother.
About a week later, Nahida was released. But there was no quid pro quo involved. So how did it happen? Then Union minister Subramanian Swamy claimed about a decade later, “Her release was obtained within a week and without any quid pro quo by tactics that have to remain secret for now.”
The matter rests at that? No. Some news reports did claim that there was a quid pro quo that happened. They said the Chandra Shekhar government released extremist Mushtaq Ahmed in exchange for Nahida’s release.
In his book, Kashmir: Glimpses of History and the Story of Struggle, Soz wrote that it was then Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif who got Nahida freed. Sharif reportedly asked his Information Minister to convey to 'people concerned' that kidnapping a woman was unIslamic.
Killing men and their families only for joining political parties ain’t Islamic either, but let’s change tracks now. Let us talk to you about US’ First Lady Melania Trump. Actually this is about her statue. On July 4, when the US celebrated its Independence Day, a wooden sculpture of Melania was torched in Slovenia. Why did Slovenia have a Melania sculpture? That’s because the lady hails from Sevnica in Slovenia. Now, you may belong to where you belong to but you don’t have your statue there, so why her?
Brad Downey, a Berlin-based American artist, who built it, said he only wanted to start a dialogue about the political situation in the US which is increasingly becoming anti-immigrant when the First Lady herself was one.
Melania is only the second US First Lady to have been born outside the US. The first First Lady to be born outside US was Louisa Catherine Adams, wife of John Quincy Adams.
But we were talking Melania, who was known for staying stylish even in Slovenia. People, who had seen her grow in Sevnica, said people there were tight on cash, but even then Melania was “very fancy” and “never wore anything from the store”.
Trump had recently promised to take a hard line against those vandalising statues in the US as part of the Black Lives Matter protests. It seemed like the vandals chose to cock a snook at Trump from Sevnica. The move has, however, ended in meeting Trump at Trump’s level.
Forget Trump, let's remind you of Soorma Bhopali. Actor Jagdeep, who played that role in Sholay (1975), passed away due to age-related issues yesterday evening.
Jagdeep, whose full name was Syed Ishtiaq Ahmed Jafri, had worked in about 25 movies by the time Sholay happened, but it was Sholay that immortalised him as Soorma Bhopali.
That character started finding its shape while shooting for Sarhadi Lutera (1966). One evening after the shooting, the cast and crew of the film was sitting and chatting when someone said, “Kahan kahan se aa jate hain” in a typical style. Jagdeep asked the person, “What style was that?” The person said this was the style in which women from Bhopal speak.
When Sholay was made, this style was adopted by Soorma Bhopali.
Since we are talking of Sholay, let us remind you today happens to be the birthday of Sholay’s Thakur, Sanjeev Kumar. Both Thakur and Soorma Bhopali aren’t among us now, but their work will always be.
We will leave you with that for now.
Be back tomorrow.
Also Read: DailyOh! When Dada made Steve Waugh wait; to the killing that made Vikas Dubey don