Mumbai blasts prompt questions over Indian intelligence yet again

Government tries to fight accusations it is clueless over terrorism after co-ordinated explosions in city leave 18 dead Cities across India are on high alert as the government came under mounting criticism for its repeated failures to detect terrorist attacks, following the blitz on Mumbai in which 18 people were killed. As a steady monsoon drizzle swept Mumbai, the casualty figure from the three bomb explosions on Wednesday was revised downwards by the home minister, P Chidambaram, on a visit to the affected districts. “The discovery of the severed head takes the number of killed to 18 (reduced from the earlier official figure of 21 dead), while the number of injured stands at 131,” Chidambaram said. “It appears that ammonium nitrate was used in the bombs, with a timer mechanism. The three blasts occurred within 10 minutes of each other, which shows it was a co-ordinated terrorist attack.” He added that of the 131 injured, 26 have been discharged from hospital, 82 are in a stable medical condition, while 23 are critical. As yet, no known terrorist organisation – Indian cities have been attacked in recent years by both Muslim and Hindu terrorists – has taken responsibility for the blasts, but security experts believe the prime suspect in the latest outrage is the radical Muslim group, the Indian Mujahideen (IM). But despite the IM remaining active for the last nine years following the Feb 2002 anti-Muslim violence in teh state of Gujarat, both intelligence agencies and local police are struggling to eliminate the threat. Defending the security agencies, Chidambaram told reporters that “if there was no intelligence on a particular incident it doesn’t mean a failure of intelligence.” But he failed to clarify his logic. He also insisted that CCTV cameras have been installed in Mumbai, even though the state home department has still to clear a Jan 2009 city police proposal for a 5,000-camera electronic surveillance network. Only the traffic police have CCTV cameras at road junctions. Maharashtra’s chief minister, Prithviraj Chavan, also maintained that CCTV cameras had “got a lot of useful footage” of the attacks, but explained away the failure to upgrade the system by saying: “Mumbai wants quick progress … but procurement (of equipment) is a difficult process.” Even the ruling Congress party leader, Rahul Gandhi, joined the official chorus and declared that “99% of terror attacks have been stopped” by the authorities. The newspapers however carried long lists of terror strikes in Mumbai and other cities during the last decade, including several that remain unsolved. “It is very difficult to stop every single terror attack,” Gandhi added. “We’ve improved in leaps and bounds, but terrorism is something that is also increasing in leaps and bounds.” Many businesses at the gold, diamond and jewellery centres in Mumbai that were hit by the blasts remained closed on Thursday, but a few traders and workers who were around expressed anger and frustration at the fact that Mumbai had again become a target for terrorists. “Terrorist attacks on Mumbai have become an annual event, the city has become an easy target, as the government cannot do anything,” a businessman in Zaveri Bazaar said on a TV news channel. “So we’ve no choice but to keep working.” Even as politicians resorted to tired clichés about the “resilience of the people of Mumbai”, a young man at the third bomb site in Dadar spoke of the ordinary man’s helplessness. He said: “The relatives of the injured and dead are faced with one kind of tension today, whereas others like me have another kind of tension – the daily tension of filling our stomach. Inflation has gone out of hand, so we’ve to work in order to survive.” But a lot of the anger was directed against the politicians, some of whom made ritual and pointless tours of the bomb sites meant as photo ops. Meanwhile, relatives of the dead stood patiently outside the city coroner’s office in the monsoon rain hoping to collect the bodies of their loved ones. India Global terrorism Maseeh Rahman guardian.co.uk

Posted by on July 14, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.