AHMEDABAD: Narendra Modi may have shot to fame in politics as an RSS pracharak . But, it is his "pet pracharak", encounter specialist D G Vanzara, whom he is missing the most today.
For, with the arrest of this architect of Sohrabuddin fake encounter seven months ago, the flow of "encounters" and "terrorist activity" has dried up in Gujarat. With it, those macabre plots to "eliminate" Modi and spread terror in Gujarat have also dried up.
BJP insiders say it is the absence of this prime "spin doctor" that is pinching Modi the most at a time when he is groping for an emotive issue to charge up the masses.
The buzz in the political circles is that if Vanzara had not been behind bars today, a string of encounters, arrests of suspected terrorists and recovery of bombs and ammunition would have heightened the election tempo and added that extra colour to Modi's image as the saviour of Hindus.
Vanzara could alone have helped him reign as the "Hindu hriday samrat" that he loves to call himself. Police records say, there have been as many as 14 encounter deaths in the state in the last five years and of these, Vanzara - a Gujarat cadre IPS officer - was directly involved in 10. All these encounters were carried out during his reign as heads of the Ahmedabad city crime branch and the anti-terrorist squad. The last encounter was that of Tulsi Prajapati, the sole eyewitness in Sohrabuddin case.
Apart from this, there have been numerous seizures of bombs and arms and a
