Is Mohammed Haneef a lucky guy or what!

Of course, that is tongue-in-cheek, especially if he is innocent. But why am I not surprised by the cries of 'racism'. As I had mentioned in an earlier post, Indian media and other elites are quick to shout 'racism' when it concerns the actions of western nations.They(the westerners) can never be in honest error, or be just following usual legal or law-enforcement procedures -it just has to be 'racism'. Haneef's case is such a blatant example of hypocrisy that even someone like Barkha Dutt, who in general is the murti* of politicallycorrectspeak, can smell the stink -Haneef: India’s hypocrisy.

But before she gets going, she makes a Pavlovian error -

By all accounts, the 27-year-old doctor from Bangalore is being victimised, hounded and tortured.

(emphasis mine)

Tortured? Really? What evidence do you have of Haneef having been tortured, Barkha? Was it on NDTV? I must have missed it. Can't find it on their site, though. Of course, this torture tale is absurd -unless it means that just the mental stress that anyone who is arrested goes through is torture. Ever since the 'war on terror' started, media has been dumbing down the definition of torture. Now just being arrested is torture.
Other reports say that Haneef is in good health. They must not have spoken to Barkha, yet.

Victimised? You mean the police are deliberately going after him, for no good reason? That he was not picked up on the request of the British authorities? That he was not suspected to be close to Kafeel and Sabeel? That his itinerary after the failed attacks did not raise any suspicion?

As I had said before (in that same post), Barkha Dutt just can't completely get it right, though of late she has been trying-

But, what if Haneef had been arrested in Bangalore instead of Brisbane? What if a suicide bomber had rammed his explosives-laden car into the airport at Srinagar, instead of Scotland? And what if our investigating agencies had then told us that Haneef was a dreaded terrorist because he had loaned his mobile sim card to one of the men involved in the attack? Would we have been as concerned then about whether an innocent man had been locked away? Would we have demanded transparency from our judicial process on the grounds that the evidence was sketchy? Or would we have simply ranted about how India is a soft State and Islam a factory for fundamentalists? We have branded the Australians as racist, but would we have called ourselves communal?

I'll tell you what would have happened to Haneef if he had been arrested in Bangalore after an attack had happened in India -then he would have learnt what 'torture' really means. He would have got the choicest of 3rd degree techniques that our police train in regularly. And you can bet, Manmohan Singh would have lost not a wink of sleep over it, just as he loses no sleep (or even miss an occasional nap) over the daily torture and beatings that happen in custody all over India. An Indian has to be arrested in Australia to get Mr.Singh's attention. He can't be bothered with the thousands that languish in jails for years without trial. Haneef has been in custody
for about three weeks.

It is possible that Haneef is completely innocent, that he has just been a victim of circumstances and bad choice of friends. But let me say this in earnest -he sure is lucky. Lucky not be arrested in India. Lucky that Kafeel did not drive a Tata Sumo into the Delhi airport. If innocent, the Australian law will let him off sooner rather than later, instead of withering for years in an Indian jail.

Barkha Dutt's article is here. It is worth a read(I can't believe I just said that!).

*The colorful Indian language translator-
murti - (literally, a statue or sculpture) paragon, or a perfect example of.