Bombings expose India's counter-terror effort : (Pictures disturbing)
Source: The hindu
In spite of multi-million investments, investigations into 5 urban terrorist attacks since 26/11 continue to flail about in dark
In spite of massive investments in investigation and counter-terrorism
intelligence capabilities since 26/11, police forces across the country
have made little progress in identifying the perpetrators of the five
major urban attacks which have taken place since then.
The attacks include the February 2010 bombing of the German Bakery in
Pune; the April 2010 serial bombings at the Chinnaswamy stadium in
Bangalore, the drive-by shooting at Delhi's iconic Jama Masjid in
September 2010, and the December 2010 bombing at the Shitla Ghat in
Varanasi.
In May this year, a car bomb planted outside the Delhi High Court,
mercifully caused no loss of life, apparently because the electronic
circuits in the explosive device malfunctioned in the extreme heat.
The National Investigation Agency, set up with fanfare in 2009 to
assuage public anger over a similar series of failures leading up to
26/11, has been assigned three of these cases — but it is yet to
register success.
In 2010-2011, the latest annual report of the Union Home Ministry
records, large investments were made in “new measures to meet the grave
challenges posed by global terrorism.” The report says the MHA's major
achievements include the establishment of new rapid-response hubs for
the National Security Guard special forces, and the establishment of an
online National Intelligence Grid.
Experts say the poor dividends from these measures were predictable.
“Even though both State and Central governments have been scrambling to
set up all kinds of special counter-terrorism forces,” says Dr. Ajai
Sahni, Director of the Institute for Conflict Management in New Delhi,
“there has been no real effort to improve intelligence-gathering and
investigations capabilities from the bottom-up.”
“No computer,” he points out, “is going to help you solve a case if you've got no worthwhile data to feed into it”.
Flailing investigation
Investigators believe all the five attacks are linked to members of the
Indian Mujahideen — the Lashkar-e-Taiba linked terrorist group
responsible for a string of attacks in several Indian cities between
2006 and 2008. Little hard evidence, however, has emerged to support the
claims, though police say the available intelligence suggests that the
organisation has been attempting to regroup.
Part of that evidence, the Gujarat Police say, came from Danish Riyaz, a
software engineer arrested earlier this year on charges of having
participated in the Indian Mujahideen's 2008 strikes in Ahmedabad.
Mr. Riyaz, the Gujarat Police claim, left his job with a software firm
in Hyderabad soon after the bombings, and moved to Ranchi. There, he is
alleged to have helped harbour several fugitive Indian Mujahideen
figures — key among them being Abdul Subhan Qureshi, who liaised among
the multiple jihadist cells which carried out the organisation's urban
bombing campaign.
Police say that Qureshi left Ranchi for Nepal in 2008, tasking Mr. Riyaz
with finding new recruits for the organisation. He, however, did not,
according to investigators, have any success. “Local members of the
Students Islamic Movement of India,” an official associated with the
investigation said, “did not want anything to do with his efforts.”
Eight other alleged Indian Mujahideen operatives, three of them linked
to the 2008 attacks in Gujarat, were recently arrested by the Madhya
Pradesh police. Investigators say interrogation of the three men, Mujeeb
Sheikh, Muhammad Faisal and Mehboob Malik, did not throw up any
specific information that fresh attacks were being planned.
Police have been accused, with some reason, of attempting to manufacture evidence in an effort to conceal the lack of progress.
In May 2010, Mangalore resident Abdul Samad Siddibapa was arrested on
charges have having carried out the attack — an apparent breakthrough
that led the Union Home Minister to publicly congratulate State and
Central authorities on “apprehending the prime suspect within hundred
days of the incident.”
The Hindu, however, first revealed that Mr. Siddibapa, who had
been interrogated several times for his possible connections with the
Indian Mujahideen, had no connection with the incident.
Fabrication of evidence
Later, Mumbai Police investigators claimed to have evidence linking
Latur resident Mirza Himayat Baig to the Pune bombing. In a charge sheet
filed in December, the investigators said Mr. Baig was ordered to carry
out the attack by Muhammad Zarar Siddibapa — Mr. Siddibapa's younger
brother, who closely resembles a man captured carrying the bomb by
closed-circuit television cameras.
The charge sheet also states that Mr. Baig was trained by fugitive
Lashkar operatives Fayyaz Ahmad Kagzi and Zabiuddin Ansari, who are
alleged to have been responsible for a series of strikes
Lawyers for Mr. Baig have, however, since said that Mr. Baig was in the
custody of the Maharashtra's anti-terrorism police at the time the
German Bakery was bombed.
Fabrication of evidence by the police forces is alleged to have
undermined past investigations into several Indian Mujahideen attacks.
Investigations by The Hindu, for example, revealed credible
evidence that Indian Mujahideen operatives likely carried out the 2006
bombings of Mumbai's suburban train system — an offence for which
several other suspects are now being tried.
The pictures of people injured or killed in the Mumbai bomb
explosions may cause distress to readers. They are being published to
show the horror, the trauma, and the human suffering inflicted by the
terrorist attacks.
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