Blasts’ aftermath: So much to learn

It is quite evident that the blast near the BJP office in Bengaluru on Wednesday was an improvised explosive device placed on a motorcycle. Although no deaths have occurred and most of the 16 casualties have suffered only light injuries, a number of vehicles in the area of the blast have been mangled and charred.

This suggests that the human casualty could have been far worse. Not for nothing is the IED the weapon of choice for the Taliban in Afghanistan.
While it is too soon to establish the identity of those behind the blast, an attack like this could hardly have been carried out without precise coordination and execution. Rightly anticipating that the scope of damage of such an explosion goes well beyond the injury list, and that the aim of the perpetrators would perhaps have been to shake the morale a few weeks before the Assembly election in Karnataka, the National Investigating Agency has moved in.
An outfit like the Indian Mujahideen, a loose conglomerate of like-minded ideological extremists who take their cue from elements in Pakistan, is likely to be on the radar of the authorities for the blast. However, others cannot be excluded at this stage. The location, some 100 metres from the BJP office, can be entirely fortuitous. In the election season political meanings are apt to be read into the incident, but investigators must unerringly go only by the evidence.
It is not unlikely that the choice of the timing of the explosion — right on the heels of the twin blasts in Boston on Monday — was calculated to gain mileage in the hope that observers might just seek to make a connection. A link of any nature, except a broadly ideological one perhaps, does not appear likely, however. The real story, of course, is that terrorist operatives are around; they can act without fearing detection too much; and that the law and order arrangements in this country are sloppy as always.
Three weeks before a major election, better traffic management and detection devices may have been expected in the vicinity of not only the office of the ruling party in Karnataka but all major political parties, and at other key locations in not just Bengaluru but other urban centres across the state. Worse, after the blast, the area wasn’t cordoned off. Spectator mobs were hovering around, making forensic work difficult. This is a major difference from the way the police, media, and ordinary folk react to a terrorist episode in the West. In India, there is a free-for-all — a terrorist crime may well be an ordinary traffic accident. To make matters worse, turf-guarding politicians won’t allow a national counter-terrorism centre to come into being.