Tougher laws needed to win war against terror

On Monday,the Gujarat Police arrested two people who could be involved in the Ahmedabad bomb blasts and released five sketches of suspects who could be involved in both the Delhi blasts and the Ahmedabad blasts.

Tragically in India, we just do not have a political consensus on how to fight terror. People are dying, but politicians simply fight on, blaming each other. So there is no time nor inclination to reform the courts, the police or the intelligence services.

As politicians fight, terrorists have a field day.

Abdul Subhaan Quereshi alias Tauqeer, a techie, is now suspected to be the Indian version of Osama bin Laden, using technology to create terror in the name of jehad or holy war. He is being hunted for blasts in Delhi, Ahmedabad, Jaipur and three cities of Uttar Pradesh.

There are atleast four more names that are on the police's list of suspects as patterns are being analysed in the recent spate of bombings.

The Ahmedabad Anti-Terrorism Squad has passed on the names of Alam Zaib Afridi, Mujib Jamirbhai Shaikh, Abdul Razzak and Qayamuddin as suspects to the Delhi police bombings. Top SIMI operative, Abu Bashir is being interrogated in Ahmedbad by a team of Delhi Police camping out there.

The statistics are stunning for India - 15 terror attacks since 2002 and not a single conviction. The country's top bosses have no clue who the real enemy is.

In an exclusive interview to CNN-IBN, Home Minister Shivraj Patil said that the information that terrorists planned to strike the Capital was available with intelligence agencies. However, What was not available were the details about time, venue and modus-operandi.

Meanwhile, everytime terror strikes, it tears to shreds any confidence people harbour that this is an one-off case that will not play out again.

The question that was being debated on CNN-IBN's Face The Nation was: Is India losing its war on terror? On the panel of experts to debate the issue were Congress Spokesperson, Jayanti Natarajan; BJP Spokesperson, Rajiv Pratap Rudy and former director of the Intelligence Bureau, A K Doval.

At the start of the show, 85 per cent of viewers felt that India was indeed losing the war on terror and only a handful 15 per cent begged to differ.

AAM ADMI IN PERIL

The politicians are safe in their fortified bungalows and bulletproof cars with red beacons. It is the common man on the streets whose life is being torn to shreds.

Since the UPA Government took over, there have been 10 blasts and 650 killed but not a single conviction. In this kind of a situation, should the Home Minister not consider resigning on grounds of moral responsibility?

Congress Spokesperson Jayanti Natarajan begged to differ. "I do not think the issue is that the Home Minister should resign. Rather it is that we should all stand together and join ranks instead of being confrontationist about it," she said.

So is the Opposition politicising terror?

"In London in 2005 when terror struck, the Labour Party and the Conservatives stuck together to fight the enemy unitedly. By slotting the terror strikes into issues pertaining to religious divides, is the BJP adding to divisions in society? At the end of the day, terror is not an UPA versus NDA issue, or an identity one. Least of all is it a Hindu versus Muslim issue and the BJP in the process is refusing to create a political consensus on how to deal with terror," opined Jayanti.

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

BJP spokesperson, Rajiv Pratap Rudy did not agree. "The Government of the day has to be responsible for tackling terror. But the language to fight terror should be a visible one with overt tones of zero tolerance. Only then will strict signals go out to people and to the terror groups," he said.

"There were laws in the country that were good enough to fight terror. The Congress Party repealed them," he added.

The BJP's demands of hanging of Afzal Guru, or talks against infiltration and apeasement is leading to a politically incorrect branding for the party felt Rudy.

He felt that the Congress has simply run out of ideas to fight terror and is still ignorant of India's security needs.

"When it is absolutely obvious that SIMI is involved, Congress still continues its drive to sympathise with the infamous network. The people have a right to know who is accountable for the lives of the people who are being slain on the streets" Rudy said.

However, A K Doval tended to disagree. He felt that heads need not necessarily roll and that India was a very powerful country which would get over the nefarious designs of the terror networks.

"Infiltration across the border, gun-running, financing, counterfeit currency and the drug syndicate - we have not performed to the expectations people had from us," Doval stated.

What is important is not what has happened but how much and what have we done to avert it, opined Doval.

"Terrorism ia a very complex matter. We must check what measures have been taken in the last four years to counter this," he added.

Another point that was raised was that whenever a terror attack takes place, the Indian Police and intelligence agencies first say that either the HuJI, the SIMI or the Indian Mujahideen is the perpetrator. Shouldn't the forensic trail be followed first to further zero down on the perpetrators rather than assuming that a certain agency did it even before investigations start off?

Doval said that the pressure from the media makes the agencies name the suspected operatives. "The negative role of media pushes the police to declare prematurely," he said.

THANK GOD FOR OTHER MERCIES

Experts feel that the people of this country have shown exemplary courage and vision by not creating a law and order situation to add fuel to the terror problem. The war on terror would be truly lost the day a law and order situation is coupled with terror strikes.

However, there are opinions that the BJP's stress on law bordered on providing platform for misusers. POTA had the possibilty of misuse against innocent people and so it might not be the best device against terror.

To this Rudy said, "Any law in that case is a device for misuse. That does not mean we should be a country sans laws. Laws are deterrents and the laws of the day do not cover the ground well. Confessions are not admissible in court, bail is given easily to those accused in terror cases, technologically savvy operatives and external help to terrorists are not discounted for and that is when terrorists note that here is a country that is soft on terror. Naturally they are emboldened."

TIME TO ENACT LAWS

Rudy was quick to point out that America has not had a repeat attack of terror ever since 9/11. The country had the stomach to enact laws like the Patriot Act. The UPA Government needs to look at tougher legislation and even replacing the Home Minister with a younger and more dynamic figure.

"The Prime Minister has been talking about a federal agency that will look into terror. We need to tighten our act," agreed Natarajan. But she gave the Home Minister a clean chit, saying that it was not a single person's failure but that of the entire system.

"When the Karol Bagh blasts took place, people's security conscience was on exhibit. People flocked to the sites to watch what was happening. Despite all this I feel we will win the war on terror," emphasised Natarajan.

Many feel that maybe the BJP should stop the religious rhetoric and accept that terror knows no religion. Those who strike have no religion and BJP must reinvent its stand and stop calling it a "Hindu versus Muslim" issue.

Rajiv Pratap Rudy said that the bombers who flew the planes into the World Trade Centre in America on 9/11 were religious fanatics. Even America made no bones about calling them that.

"The BJP speaks about these fanatics who do not belong to any nation. And when the Prime Minister speaks about the federal agency to fight terror, he should understand that without proper laws to fight terror, no agency can succeed. Even the National Security advisor to the PM says that we need laws to fight terror," Rudy said.

Many human rights activists say that America's Patriot Law infringes on human rights but we see it is effective. So why cannot India emulate that example?

Jayanti said, "There are enough laws already, only the will to enact them should be mustered. While the NDA government was in power, there were just as many attacks. In India, there is the threat of laws being misused as they were in Gujarat, therefore the trepidation to bring tougher legislation."

"A law can become a tool in the hands of people wanting to target a community and in a proper democracy one needs to safeguard the interests of all the people," she added.

So the final outcome was that there was no consensus between the ruling UPA leaders and those from the Opposition BJP. So where is the united front against terror?

As Doval pointed out, there is an urgent need to act against the terror networks otherwise many of us are in the line of fire. It is time to end the political rhetoric and to give constructive suggestions.

Viewers wrote in to say that the Government should have a set of 'to-dos' after a terror strike.