By Murali Krishnan, IANS
New Delhi : The two terror blasts that snuffed out 42 lives in Hyderabad Saturday – just three months after 13 were killed in the Mecca Masjid explosions in the same city – should prompt the government to seriously consider setting up a separate authority to deal with crimes threatening India’s security, say security and legal experts.
With India increasingly coming on the radar of global Islamist terror as evidenced by the pronouncements of the Al Qaeda leadership and the string of terror attacks in the last two years, this issue should now be given topmost consideration.
Just sample the number of attacks in the last two years and the record of both our police and investigative agencies in cracking the conspiracies, establishing international linkages or zeroing in on the perpetrators behind the many blasts.
A year after the 7/11 Mumbai train blasts that killed 187 people, investigations by Mumbai’s crack Special Task Force have yet to establish the real identity of the serial blasts bombers or the suppliers of the deadly RDX and ammonium nitrate explosives or even the precise connection between the Lashker-e-Taiba (LeT) cadres and the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) members.
The massive chargesheet filed by the anti-terrorist squad last November does not spell out the complete conspiracy and lists eight accused as Pakistanis with only first names and without addresses or other details.
Though some of the accused did train under the LeT chief, Azam Cheema, investigators have yet to get a fix on the entire operation, including the involvement of SIMI general secretary Ehtesham Siddiqui.
“If you look at the chargesheet of the Mumbai blasts of 1993 that meticulously details the planning, logistics, perpetrators and the larger conspiracy, this (chargesheet) has many gaps and too may questions unanswered,” said a key security official who cannot be identified.
In fact it is not the 7/11 attacks alone that remain unsolved. There is still no transparency or clarity as to who was behind the pre-Diwali attacks in New Delhi’s markets that killed 50 people in October 2005, or the twin attacks that killed 20 people in Varanasi’s Sankat Mochan temple in March 2006 or the blasts in Malegaon’s mosque in September last year that killed 31.
Despite the setting up of anti-terror mechanism by both India and Pakistan to share details and cooperate in trans-border terror attacks, investigators are still groping in the dark on the probe in the Samjhauta Express blasts of Feb 19 this year that killed 67 people, mostly Pakistani nationals.
Besides procuring some leads on the material bought for the assemblage of the bombs and a few ‘suspicious’ telephone calls that were made before the blasts, the probe for all practical purposes has hit a dead-end.
Just last month a government appointed committee submitted a key report on criminal justice recommending the setting up a separate authority at the national level to deal with crimes threatening the country’s security.
Such a professional body, argues its author, Madhava Menon, should be comparable to the Election Commission or the Comptroller and Auditor General of India. He feels the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is not “independent” enough for the job nor does it have the resources, jurisdiction or personnel required.
The report expressed serious concern over crimes affecting national security like terrorism, hijacking and drug trafficking and suggested that crimes relating to internal security be classified as federal crimes.
“There is widespread dissatisfaction with the way crimes are investigated and criminals prosecuted by our existing criminal justice system, which in public perception, affords little protection to life and property,” said Menon, a former director of Bangalore’s National Law School.
It is perhaps time the government paid heed to this report and constituted an expert body to deal with terror attacks.