Terrorist violence has rocked Hyderabad once again. Thursday evening’s twin blasts have claimed 16 lives, mostly of young people as the busy city area in which the detonations occurred is a transport hub and has several educational and training institutes.
To that extent the perpetrators chose their location well. There might have been three blasts but one of the bombs failed to go off. If it had, the casualty would have been higher. This shows that the module that carried out the attacks did so with thorough preparation. It is not unreasonable to think that it may have also had sufficient confidence that it won’t be found out easily, and that if it was it will take a long time to secure conviction.
After all, this is the story of the two separate terrorist incidents of 2007, the last time terrorism visited the city. Although six years have gone by, there have been no convictions in the Mecca Masjid blast of that year, for which some Hindu extremists are believed to be among those responsible, and then the twin blasts of August the same year, for which operatives of Indian Mujahideen, widely seen as the local Indian affiliate of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, are being investigated. No one has so far been brought to trial in either case. This is completely unacceptable.
Extremist elements are emboldened when terrorist strikes do not lead to successful prosecutions in reasonable time. This points to governance issues in the widest sense. There are just too many police and intelligence agencies involved, and quite frequently they work at cross purposes. There appears inadequate coordination as between Central agencies and those in
the states.
The transmitting of real-time information has not quite come off. An effort by the Manmohan Singh government to enact legislation to track terrorist outfits on a pan-India basis was thwarted by the Trinamul Congress, then a constituent of the UPA-2 government, on the specious plea that the Centre was eating into the province of the state. The Opposition parties backed the Trinamul viewpoint, arguing that law and order was a state subject. But terrorism is not a law and order matter. The nature of the beast is such that an all-India framework to deal with it suggests itself. But in this country we are apt to play politics even with matters of national security.
Union home minister Sushilkumar Shinde has been suitably cautious, and not pointed a finger at any particular group. While early inquiries suggest it might be the IM at work again, acting on LeT’s behalf to take revenge for the hangings of Ajmal Kasab and Afzal Guru, more details are clearly still needed before a chargesheet can be filed.