Click to play videoAs many as 63 people died and over 150 were injured in the eight blasts in Jaipur on Tuesday night.
Eight bombs went off within 15 minutes in a one-kilometre radius. The bombs were packed on bicycles—the terrorist strategy used in the Malegaon blasts of 2006 and blasts in three cities in Uttar Pradesh in 2007.
As the people who have suffered in the blasts tried to get on with their lives politicians started pointing fingers at each other.
The BJP alleged that the UPA Government’s "soft, weak and apathetic" policies had encouraged terrorism. Leader of the Opposition L K Advani wanted the Government to re-enact POTA against terrorists. "After seeing the major blasts in Jaipur, it is high time for the government of India to reintroduce POTA," he said.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh rejected such demands, saying: "what has POTA achieved—there is no dearth of laws in the country to deal with terrorism.”
India has a long list of cities which have suffered terrorist bomb attacks: Mumbai, Delhi, Malegaon, Varanasi, Hyderabad, Ajmer and now Jaipur.
The two attacks in Hyderabad, the blast on Samjhauta Express train, the blast outside a mosque in Malegaon and the attack in Varanasi have not been conclusively solved. Often, the masterminds behind the blasts are never caught.
Does the recurring terrorist attacks and the authorities inability to prevent them prove that India a safe haven for terrorists?
CNN-IBN’s Sagarika Ghose asked Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi, BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad and national security expert Ajay Sahni, who is the director of Centre for Conflict Management.
“The security apparatus of the states and Centre has so many deficiencies that they are not capable of bringing terrorists to book or preventing attacks. Nothing has been done for decades to improve the capabilities of the police or the intelligence agencies,” said Sahni.
“A special committee recommended after the Kargil conflict that the government must set up a multi-agency centre to coordinate intelligence from the whole country. More than six years have passed and nothing has progressed. The NDA and then the UPA have been in power in these years. Parties keep blaming each other but they and most state leaderships are at fault,” he said.
Prasad insisted that he won’t make a “political statement” but said that the “possibility and apprehension of abuse” must not prevent us from applying the rule of law—a hint at bringing back POTA.
“The Indian Penal Code is abused too but you don’t say set aside IPC and income tax laws are abused but you don’ say set aside those laws. Gujarat and Maharashtra’s permission to frame laws like Maharashtra’s MCOCA has been pending for two-four years,” he said.
Mere legislation is not going to defeat terrorism, said Singhvi. “Statistics on TADA shows that the cost-benefit ratio of having a draconian law and the benefit of that law is negligible. The POTA and TADA laws were there during NDA rule but they didn’t prevent terrorist attacks.”
The UPA Government has retained POTA clauses on surveillance and interception and filtered out clauses which could have violated human rights, said Singhvi.
“The Intelligence Bureau has less than 3,500 field operatives in the whole country to cover all issues, not just counter-terrorism. But despite the infirmities of the state and Central intelligence apparatus more 96 modules of Islamic terror groups were neutralised between 2002 and 2008,” said Sahni. Security agencies are managing but they are under-resourced and the political will must be applied to help them.
Will the politicians help? “Terrorists and their minions in Pakistan, Bangladesh or Afghanistan must get this message that India is united against them. Security forces must be given complete freedom,” said Prasad.
Singhvi agreed but said political consensus on fighting terrorism would help security agencies more than any law. “The morale of our forces will be greater when they know the entire polity stands behind them like a rock—that is the responsibility of political parties. We must allow hard-nosed policing and not interfere with it by making political statements,” he said.
SMS poll on is India a safe haven for terrorists? Yes 66 per cent, No 34 per cent.
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