CLEANING UP: Washing away the bloodstains at the American Center

At any other time, it might have been just a drill. At 6:30 every morning, a Black Maria police van pulls up in the front of the American Center of Kolkata with a posse of armed policemen to relieve their bleary-eyed colleagues who have been on guard duty at night. The US library and cultural centre is a traditional target for political agitators, hence the vigil. But on January 22 the shift change was far from routine. And far less peaceful.

There was hardly any traffic on the Chowringhee (Jawaharlal Nehru Road) when two men rode to the Center's gate on a motorcycle. Both wore crash helmets and khaki trousers while the pillion-rider had a white shawl wrapped around him. They stopped, walked up to constable Suresh Hembram and showed him a piece of paper, as if inquiring about some address. While Hembram was busy figuring out the writing, the pillion rider pulled out a short-barrelled gun from underneath his shawl and began to spray the policemen with bullets. Four constables, including Hembram, died on the spot. Fourteen policemen were injured, two critically. Police later recovered 54 empty 9-mm shells, a fact that suggested the gunman had emptied two magazines from an assault rifle that could be either an AK-47 or an AK-56.

IN THE LINE OF FIRE: The 40-second hail of bullets from an automatic weapon killed five policemen and injured 14

Later investigation has shown that the hail of bullets lasted only 40 seconds, after which the duo sped off towards Middleton Street. The policemen were sitting ducks. The two platoons of 16 men each had only two .303 rifles, the rest carried lathis and guns loaded with rubber bullets and tear gas shells. Besides their equipment, their reactions were poor, evident from the fact that the sergeant in the Black Maria did not even attempt to chase the assailants. Nobody returned fire either. At least three constables received bullets in their backs, suggesting that they were running away. Surprisingly, neither of the two inspectors thought of switching on their wireless sets to alert police units in the adjoining areas. The news travelled quickly around the city almost fortuitously because the production unit of a local television channel shooting at the Maidan had actually witnessed a part of the action, and had begun telecasting the news from 7:30 a.m. onwards.

The eagerness to claim responsibility for the act ensured that the news circulated faster. At 9:53 a.m., the telephone rang at the residence of a state CID officer who had been part of a team investigating last year's kidnapping of Partha Roy Burman, owner of Khadim Shoes. The caller identified himself as Abu Arsalan and claimed he had engineered the attack. It was not a hoax: the police said they knew the voice well. It was an exact match with that of Aftab Ansari, the Varanasi-bred, Dubai-based mafia don who has masterminded several abduction operations in the country in the past few years, ending with Burman's high-profile kidnapping and release in July 2001. Ansari used to call the Burman residence from Dubai to negotiate the ransom, using the alias "Arasalan". His India operations were headed by Asif Reza Khan, alias Rajan, a Kolkata resident who was killed while in custody last year, allegedly while attempting a jailbreak in Rajkot, Gujarat.

This time, Ansari reportedly said, "Your chief minister had a hand in the killing of Rajan ... your police organised the killing in collusion with Rajkot police. This is a warning to your police who will now think twice before harming me." A little later in his communication with the newspapers, Ansari also told the newspapers that the attack had been carried out at his behest by the "Asif Reza Khan Commando Force", which, as he explained, is a new offshoot of the Harkat-ul-Jihadi-e-Islami. While the Harkat is an outfit known to the intelligence agencies in India, the group named after Khan was a surprise. A cid official said it could well be a unit raised in India-maybe in Kolkata itself-to avenge the death of Khan, who was a resident of the city's Beniapukur area and a student of Maulana Azad College before he joined the abduction mafia and, finally, Pakistan ISI-sponsored Afghan fundamentalist leaders like Masood Azhar and Sheikh Omar. At his funeral, there were processions of his supporters who threatened to avenge his "murder."

However, investigators are not so certain that the attack on policemen on duty at the American Center was actually an act of retribution. If Ansari was spewing venom at the West Bengal chief minister, as the cid reported, why weren't politicians targeted? Moreover, the argument that the state Government had conspired with the Gujarat Government in getting Khan bumped off simply doesn't wash. In fact, there were protests from the police establishment in Kolkata over the loss of a "prize witness" in the Khadim case, something Ansari is aware of.

The Kolkata Police are working overtime to present the January 22 event as a part of global terrorism. "Since the attack took place on the American Center," says Kolkata Commissioner of Police Sujoy Chakraborty, "we can safely call it an act of terrorism." The argument is facetious though, for the attackers, beyond mowing down the policemen outside, did nothing to harm the building. This despite the fact that unlike the US Consulate on Ho Chi Minh Sarani, which is protected by commandos, the level of protection at the American Center is quite low. It is especially vulnerable to explosive missiles launched from outside. Significantly, a spokesman of the US State Department in Washington evaded questions on whether the Kolkata attack was aimed at targeting his country, saying that his government was waiting for more information. US President George W. Bush too treaded carefully as he answered the same question: "Terror is terror ... it doesn't matter if it's an attack on us or an attack on other people." Still, cautious after the September 11 attack on the twin towers of the World Trade Center, an FBI agent came rushing to Kolkata for an on-the-spot inspection. In the US establishment the incident became more than a passing curiosity because of its timing-FBI chief Robert Mueller was in Delhi at the time.

THE NATION THE KEY SUSPECTS AFTAB ANSARI The Varanasi-born don is said to have made Rs 50 crore through abductions and extortions before he shifted base to Dubai last year. ASIF REZA KHAN Ansari's right-hand man who headed his India operations. The usis attack is said to be a revenge killing for Khan's death in police custody last year. AMIR REZA KHAN Another key member of the Ansari gang. He and brother Asif were key operatives in the abduction of businessman Roy Burman in 2001. SHAHID AZMI An odd-jobsman and old friend of Asif from their Tihar days. A cyber junkie, he is said to have disseminated vast amounts of information from the Net. ASLAM AKA ERSHAD A Pakistani, he shot businessman Burman when he tried to resist his abduction last year. Had stints at the Lashkar-e-Toiba training camps. FARASAT He used to be a gun-runner from Bangladesh. Was caught last year with a huge cache of AK-47 and AK-56 rifles and a large amount of RDX.

While the motive behind the attack remains unclear, there is little doubt that the police in the state were caught unprepared. Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya told India Today: "We have to be more prepared to meet the challenges of terrorism, which has now come to our door too." The lack of preparation is obvious from the haphazard manner in which the police began picking up people for investigation. Those arrested included some madarsa teachers in North 24 Parganas district and a group of bearded faithfuls who were returning from Bangladesh after attending a religious congregation near Dhaka. It was obvious that the police were groping in the dark, with very few information sources in the underworld that could provide early leads on the assailants' identity. Ansari's voice had of course been identified by the cid, but some of the investigators say it could well be his ploy to claim "credit" for an act to which he might not have been remotely connected. "We have no proof yet that the attack on policemen in front of American Center has any relation with the Khadim abduction case," said Soumen Mitra, deputy commissioner of the detective department of Kolkata Police.

However, the police has not ruled out the possibility of revenge being the motive of the attack. Accordingly, they promptly picked up for questioning two of Asif's brothers, Ali, 28, and Imran, 16. Aamir, the other brother who was Asif's cohort in crime, however, is beyond the reach of the Indian law. He is reportedly with Ansari in Dubai.

But what has been overlooked is that there might be simpler explanations to the motive behind the attack. For instance, the attack could be a signal by Pakistan that its proxy war on India could be taken as far as the east. What's obvious though is the political moral of the story: in the face of fundamentalist terrorism, West Bengal under the Marxists is just as vulnerable as the Centre governed by the NDA, even though they are on two sides of the ideological picket fence.