| Published on 01-09-2007 In National |
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| Patil's shocking mishandling of terror |
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Written by
Kamlendra Kanwar |
Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil has been the very antithesis of what a home minister should be. He is clueless about the various law and order problems and terror attacks that India faces. Yet, he survives in that key position not because the Prime Minister has faith in his ability to handle the portfolio but because he is one of the blue-eyed boys of Congress and UPA supremo Sonia Gandhi.
Three months ago he was in Hyderabad when some bombs planted by terrorists in the famous Mecca Masjid wrought havoc so that communal peace may be disturbed. He dutifully promised the perpetrators of such crimes a bloody nose and doled out relief to the victims of the attack.
Blasts rent the air in two places in the same city on 25 August, killing 42 innocent people and the Home Minister was prompt in registering his presence there again. After his return to Delhi, Mr Patil told Parliament that an anti-terror law on the lines of POTA (Prevention of Terrorism Act) could not be enacted because it would lead to more incidents of terror as police excesses and atrocities tended to increase with such laws. Can one beat such naivety?
Some of the clauses contained in POTA, which were completely dropped in the amended Unlawful Activities Act three years ago by the Patil-led Home Ministry were: the onus on the accused to prove his innocence, compulsory denial of bail to accused and admission as evidence in the court of law the confession made by the accused before the police officer.
It is now clear that neither the Central Government nor the Rajsekhar Reddy government in Andhra learnt any lessons from the Mecca Masjid blasts. At that time , the police role in the whole episode had been appalling. Despite an intelligence alert from the Centre, the CCTV cameras kept in the mosque building were non-functional when the incident occurred. The Special Action Force used to be deployed on Fridays when the congregation swelled to 10,000 or more but even that deployment had stopped a few weeks prior to the terror incident. Consequently, the mosque was a soft target.
This time too there was Central intelligence alert though it was vague and confused. State intelligence failed to take notice of it as usual. Both places where bombs were planted were popular with the people---one an entertainment park and the other an eatery and yet there was no police surveillance worth the name.
The alleged mastermind behind the latest blasts was Shahid Bilal, who had also masterminded the mosque attack and before that the blasts on the Indo-Pak train Samjhauta Express, which left 68 passengers dead. Bilal, the police said, was an organizer of the Harkat ul Jihad Islami (HuJI) who hailed from Hyderabad and had shifted to Karachi sometime ago.
As in the previous case, the main suspect would perhaps have managed to flee the country after his purpose was fulfilled.
Time and again, terrorists are taking advantage of the poor intelligence sharing and follow-up between the Centre and the states. They are also getting further emboldened by the weak legal system, which often fails to bring them to book even after they are nabbed with great difficulty.
The cold reality in the latest bomb attacks is that even if the police had been alive to the task, it would have been unable to make any preventive searches or arrests because of the State Government fear that the Muslim vote bank would have been angered by it.
Dignitaries like Shivraj Patil often parrot about terrorism being a global phenomenon. Right from the days of Mrs Indira Gandhi this has been their swan song.
Yet, the facts have their tale to tell. It is indeed instructive to know as The Times of India revealed in a recent report that India has since 2004 lost more lives to terrorist incidents than all of North America, South American, Central America, Europe and Eurasia put together. All of these lost a total 3,280 lives in terrorist incidents between January 2004 and March 2007 while India lost 3,674 lives to terror during the same period.
Even if the Indian government has any proper plan to tackle terror its results are not evident. Terrorists are planning and executing their operations with impunity and government has no concrete solution to offer against this menace. The only thing that the government does is add more Zs to the security of its own ministers and bureaucrats, who are already well protected. If a proper audit of the Indian security system were to be done it would come out that much of the money earmarked for protecting the public is used for VIP security.
Intelligence agencies in India know only too well that Hyderabad has been on the hit list of terrorists for long because the Pakistanis believe that like Junagadh in Gujarat, it should have been part of Pakistan when the country was partitioned in 1947.
Terrorist and fundamentalist groups also look upon them as legitimate lands of the Ummah, which should be restored to the Ummah. The fact that the city has emerged as a major economic hub has heightened its importance for the terrorists because incidents there hit hard at India's economic well being too.
There can be little dispute that the Manmohan Singh government's anti-terror policy is in a shambles. The price that the citizen is paying for it is heavy indeed. |
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