The US killing of Osama Bin Laden was actually a part of Mukul Deva's Salim must die. The author is back with his new book, Tanzeem

In his book Salim Must Die, published in 2009, author Mukul Deva described in detail how after getting the information from an insider, the American forces conduct a raid inside Pakistan and manage to kill Osama bin Laden. Two years later, the American forces actually killed Osama inside Pakistan. Their operation bore an uncanny similarity to Deva's raid.



A mere coincidence, one might say, given the fact that Deva's work is fiction. May be, but all through his Lashkar series (of which Salim Must Die is the second part), he has weaved his story around a series of actual events supported by his thorough research and understating of global geo-politics and his military experience. The result -- he seems to have acquired a 'Nostradamus touch'; for the way terror is unfolding in our country, neighbourhood and even globally, the line between the fact and fiction is fast getting blurred.

Getting to the future
Deva delves into future 'terror scenario' in his latest book Tanzeem (the fourth in the series). The jihadi elements are regrouping and reorganisingu00a0 under Ameer-ul- Momineemu00a0 (Commander of the faithful) post Osama-era and are all set to unleash war against the kafir and redraw the world map.u00a0It is then left to the protagonist Iqbal to let his personal vendetta against the terror merchants from across border acquire a larger canvas and try and stop this 'unified' terror machine of jihads. "Iqbal's fight was personal even in Lashkar when in an angry, knee-jerk reaction he had gone (across the border) to avenge his mother and sister. Their deaths had made him realise the futility of the jihad, but his fight had always been personal. So there is not much divergence in Tanzeem. Yes, he has started seeing the bigger picture also by now and knows that his vendetta has a larger motive. Hence his quest to kill Ameer has personal and national dimensions," says Deva.