NIA Probe Shows BTMC’s Laxity in Security

GAYA, July 19, 2013: The CCTV footage released by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on its website as part of its efforts to crack the Bodh 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 Bodh Gaya, had released two sketches of a suspect along with CCTV footage showing him entering the temple premises in a Buddhist robe. 

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 Bodh 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. 

Bodh 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.

Source: The Times of India, DT. July 19, 2013.