BT Road and the Dealy Plaza incidents

Donn Morgan Kipgen *

"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing".
-Francis Bacon

The Justice Agarwal Commission set up to investigate the high profile 23rd July, 2009, BT Road incident seems to be heading nowhere due to the lack of expert eyewitness's testimonies and non-co-operation by the joint action committee(JAC). The virtual boycotting of the Commission by the Apunba Lup, Meira Paibis and the victims' family members has undermined the resounding hoarse cry for justice.

How could one expect a fragrant smell of justice when you nibbed the promising justice in the bud!

Even with the circumstantial Tehelka photo-picture evidences with credible eyewitness testimonies, it would be one hell of a dirty job for the Agarwal Commission to legally nail the police commandos, if at all a bloody crime had been committed inside the Maimu Pharmacy on that day.

Since there was no photographic evidence that the victim no.2 had been dragged in well within and inside the pharmacy with pointed weapon and nobody had seen anybody shooting at the victim with an AK rifle, there is rather a very slim chance to indict any police commando by the inquiring commission's official findings.

Moreover, there is no physical evidence that the victim no.1 (Mrs. Rabina) was shot in the head by an assault rifle round in alleged indiscriminate firings by the IW police commandos.

If all the physical and circumstantial evidences given by both the eyewitnesses and the police IOs, the lack of forensic evidences would render this commission as murky as the eternally controversial Justice Earl Warren Commission which dubiously overlooked the damning Abraham Zapruder's colour video footages which show that President John F. Kennedy was shot at from the back and frontal side with deadly precision rifle rounds within 2 1/2 seconds period.

Of course, the other still-camera and video footages were also stunningly left uninvestigated, much to the chagrin of the Dallas police and Texas Rangers, by the then US Supreme Court's Chief Justice Earl Warren with the help of both the FBI and the shadowy CIA, so as to blame "the third assassinated" Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone killer of JFK.

The Magic Bullet Theory which concluded that the fatal rifle round that blasted off a chunk of President Kennedy's right side skull alongwith parts of brain was the Manlicher-Carcano round which also injured the Texan Governor Connally who received gunshot wounds on his shoulder, right arm, forearm, thigh and finally lodged onto his right ankle.

For such a high profile assassination projectile with state-of-art forensic sciences investigative methods, the so-called "Magic Bullet" which was considered as the first rifle round that cut through President Kennedy's throat, the Warren Commission and its federal investigating team did not and never did ask for surgical operation to extract the rifle round from Governor Connelly's leg for the mandatory forensic examination !!!

The Texan Governor literally took the Magic Bullet's Projectile down to his grave; it's still there waiting for some Law enforcement agencies or research scholars to find out the truth six foot under. Ironically, all first three Dallas police officers who had seen the alleged assassin's rifle at the 6th floor in the Texas Book depository building identified and report the weapon as a German-made Mauser rifle but were somehow forced to recant and admit that it was instead an Italian-made Mannlicher-Carcano without any finger-print of Lee Oswald.

Interestingly, Lee Oswald was actually arrested for entering a theatre without a ticket and detained as an accused "assassin" of Texas police officer Tippits who was shot dead about 10 to 15 minutes after the assassination of President Kennedy at nearby Dealy Plaza street, on 23rd November, 1963. He was "assassinated" in turn 28 hours later by one Jack Ruby.

One most bizarre part of the Warren Commission was the telling fact that most of the accused co-conspirators and witnesses met with a sudden mysterious deaths, which naturally hampered the smooth trials of investigations. The truth was too much to digest or bear by the seedy accused and hard-charging judicial investigators. This chilling factor might be the reason as to why the Warren Commission officially closed in mid-1990s!

Whereas the Justice Agarwal Commission of the BT Road incident is as good as close with reprieves and absolution for the police commandos. As the Apunba Lup(JAC) stunningly admitted the BT Road bloody shoot-out has become something of a lost cause right from the end of the double-version gunbattle's last shot. But then why would the JACs, who yelled for the heads of the somewhat irresponsible policemen and the armed UG militants for the market-encounters, steadfastly refused to fully co-operate and "guided" the Justice Agarwal Commission as fervently called by the Victims' family members as officially required?

For the O.Ibobi State Administration, the progress (or the lack of it) and public stonewalling of the high-profile Agarwal Commission is an early Christmas Gift and the the decisive stalemate of the Commission in its last stage would be a remarkable New Year's Gift for the hard-pressed MPHQ. The snail-pace present situation is as good as the Dealy Plaza Street investigation.

Everybody was there in hundreds and only few see them but did not observe. The FBI, as authorised Justice Earl Warren Commission, had reportedly seized most of the photopictures taken by the crowds but the Warren Commission apparently did not make use of them in the Court of Law.

Well, let's watch the findings and indictments of the Justice Agarwal Commission if and when it comes out.

Truth is stranger than fiction.