Sunday Times 2
Buddha Gaya blasts: Footage shows shrine committee in poor light
GAYA: The CCTV footage released by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on its website as part of its efforts to crack the Buddha Gaya serial-blasts case has done no favours to the reputation of the temple’s management committee. On Tuesday the NIA, which is probing the July 7 blasts in Buddha Gaya, had released two sketches of a suspect along with CCTV footage showing him entering the temple premises in a Buddhist robe.
GAYA: The National Investigation Agency (NIA), probing the serial bomb blasts in Buddha Gaya recently, on Tuesday released two sketches of a suspect on the basis of eyewitness accounts and CCTV footage. NIA released two sketches, one in which the suspect is wearing a mask and another bare face, on its website. Sources in NIA said that the sketches have been released on the basis of details provided by three eyewitnesses who saw the suspect before the blasts on July 7 and also material emanating from CCTV footage. Among the witnesses, whose names have been kept secret for probe purposes, two are foreigners and one local. The foreigners are from Sri Lanka and Thailand while the third one is a local Gaya native, the sources said. The suspect in monk attire is also seen moving around in the temple in the wee hours (around 3:30am to 4:30am) of July 7. NIA has also released CCTV footage and sought information about the suspect. (Courtesy The Times of India)
Besides the poor quality of the recorded images, the location of the cameras, their failure to record any of the four bomb-planting operations undertaken within a radius of a few metres from the main shrine and the general upkeep of the shrine have come in for criticism.
In the footage released by the NIA — for help in identifying the suspect and solving the case — a stray dog is seen hovering around the seat where the Buddha meditated to attain enlightenment. This, when the Buddha Gaya Temple Management Committee (BTMC) maintains an army of watch and ward staff, and monks, too, are deputed at important points to supervise the maintenance of the shrine’s sanctity.
In the past the BTMC has warded off criticism regarding its failure to protect tourists and pilgrims from the dog menace, despite several instances of dog bites, on the grounds that the use of any kind of force is resented by the Buddha devotees thronging the shrine. But during the chief minister’s recent ‘seva yatra’, all the street dogs in the shrine’s vicinity were rounded up and handed over to the temporary care of an NGO. The dogs were released after the yatra ended.
Buddha Gaya researcher Rajiv Kumar said the cash-rich committee could easily run its own care home for stray dogs — there would be no shortage of donors for such a scheme. BTMC secretary N Dorje has stopped taking calls to defend the committee’s acts of omission and commission.
Over the decades the BTMC has ignored several wake-up calls to put its house in order. First, the shrine was repeatedly violated by idol smugglers who removed original Buddha images fixed on the outer walls and inserted fake images in their place. Then, an alleged VHP mole was allowed to run the show at the shrine in a monk’s garb. It was only after a TOI report that Gyan Jagat, the all-important shrine committee chief priest and a member of the VHP’s Marg Darshak Mandal, mysteriously disappeared from the BTMC office, never to return.
(Courtesy The Times of India)
Follow @timesonlinelk
comments powered by Disqus