New Delhi: India’s home ministry has evolved a new way of identifying terrorists: by scanning their private parts.
A ministry notice seeking the public’s help in identifying the four militants killed during the Pathankot airbase siege in January mentions they had undergone “circumcision” – a rite Muslim males have to go through (as do male Jews).
“This is unheard of and shocking. It’s religious profiling,” Ved Marwah, a former governor and one-time National Security Guard director-general, told The Telegraph.
Several other security veterans and home ministry officials too expressed shock at what they described as an unprecedented move by the government.
The National Investigation Agency, which reports to the home ministry, released photos of the four men this evening seeking help in their identification. Under each photo, the notice mentioned the dead man’s gender and body type, adding: “circumcision present”.
If the objective is to establish the terrorists’ Pakistani origin, how does the mention of “circumcision” help, Marwah wondered.
Marwah said: “That (circumcision) does not make the terrorists Pakistanis, because all Muslim males have to go through that, be it in India or any other country. Many Hindus too undergo circumcision on health grounds.”
Besides, “how can knowing whether a terrorist was circumcised or not help people identify him”, former CBI director Joginder Singh asked.
The notice comes four days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi told a Sufism conference: “The fight against terrorism is not a confrontation against any religion.”
Singh accused the NIA of trying to cover up its failure to crack the Pathankot case by highlighting something that can have no role in the investigation.
“The NIA has not been able to make any headway in ascertaining where the terrorists had come from, which route they had taken into India, and who provided them logistic support,” he said.
A former Intelligence Bureau director was “appalled” at the public notice mentioning “circumcision”.
“How does circumcision make the four terrorists Pakistanis?” he asked, echoing Marwah. “I guess it’s being done to brand a particular community.”
NIA director Sharad Kumar told this newspaper that a probe had revealed the terrorists were circumcised and the finding was part of the case diary.
Asked why that needed to be mentioned in the public notice and whether this could help people identify the terrorists, he said: “The notice was issued today, let me go through it.”
A home ministry official said that senior ministry and NIA officials would be expected to have seen and cleared such a public notice before its release.
He said that notices seeking the public’s help in identifying terrorists or suspects always mention gender, colour, height, body type and any identification marks but never anything relating to circumcision.
The official recalled that the photos of the Pakistani gunmen killed after the November 2008 Mumbai attacks did not mention circumcision.
“By mentioning it, the NIA seems to want to send out a message that although all Muslims are not terrorists, all terrorists are Muslims,” the official said.
The NIA, a federal investigative agency, was formed after the Mumbai attacks to probe terror cases.