What was the security apparatus doing?

The serial blasts that rocked three places at Mumbai within a short spell of 11 minutes in the peak evening hours of July 13 and left, at last count, 21 dead and 141 injured, have elicited from the Home Minister, Mr P.Chidambaram, the following inane pronouncements made with great solemnity and a sense of discovery.

First, the blasts were the result of the groups responsible working “in a very coordinated manner”; second, they were meant to cause maximum loss of lives in crowded localities; and third, “whoever perpetrated this attack has worked in a very, very clandestine manner.”

Does the making of these jejune statements require any out-of-this world intelligence or exalted authority having access to the entire security paraphernalia? Aren't they obvious to the naked eye of even a below average witness to the catastrophe? Instead of their intelligence being insulted like this, the people of India want to have answers from the Home Minister to a few questions.

Ghastly attack

Just a week before the blasts, the Home Minister had expressed “great satisfaction” that the first six months of 2011 were the “most peaceful” in the last decade.

How come the terrorist groups have given the lie to that boast so soon?

The position has been made all the more worrisome by his admission, while talking to the media immediately after the tragedy, that neither the State police nor the intelligence and investigative agencies had received any specific intelligence about Mumbai being targeted again.

If so, what were the famous National Intelligence Agency (NIA) and the much-hyped new security architecture that he had put in place doing all this time? The puzzle does not stop there. Mr Chidambaram gives a peculiar spin to the want of intelligence by adding that it cannot be seen as an intelligence failure, since “Intelligence sharing has improved...we collect it every day and act on it”!

Although the groups responsible for this ghastly attack are yet to be identified, suspicion falls heavily on Indian Mujahideen, the outgrowth of the Lashkar-e-Taiba.

In my article, The Incubus of Indian Mujahideen , published in this paper on July 28, 2008, I had earnestly pleaded that in the matter of extirpating terrorism from the Indian soil, the intelligence and investigative personnel should feel free to function totally independent of, and fully immune from, political meddling.

I had also urged that the Union Home Ministry should make known by an open circular in explicit and unambiguous language to all the police, intelligence and security agencies serving under the jurisdiction of both the Centre and the States that they need have no hesitation or inhibition in exercising their powers and authority under the law and coming down heavily against those they reasonably suspected of involvement in terrorist acts.

Hamstrung

Also, in the matter of conducting searches, effecting arrests, interrogating suspects, making thorough and rigorous investigations and taking them to their logical conclusion, and pursuing the cases vigorously in courts, and generally in discharging their duties, I had asked for police, intelligence and security personnel being left to act in their own best judgment under the law, without having to wait for instructions from higher channels, unless so enjoined by law.

From my enquiries, the gathering and assessment of intelligence and action against terrorist groups continue to be hamstrung by the fears of intelligence and security personnel that they will come to grief if they are bold in pursuing leads and taking stern action.

These fears have been further fuelled by the provisions of the draft Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill which, in popular perception, seem to denote a mindset weighted against the majority community.

Finally, such serial blasts at such short intervals, involving such extensive and unerring preparations, could not have taken place without some locals being in league with the mujahideen. In this sense, any local community cannot shirk the responsibility of maintaining a constant vigil against any sign of suspicious activities and movements coming to its attention and promptly intimating the authorities.

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