Mumbai ,Feb. 14: Union home minister P. Chidambaram, who rushed to Pune on Sunday morning, denied an intelligence failure, but conceded that major Indian cities were as vulnerable to terror attacks as other international cities. He also expressed the Indian government’s demand to interrogate suspected Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) operative David Headley.
Addressing a press conference in Pune, the home minister said, “Any city with a population of six million or 10 million is vulnerable to attack. We are just as vulnerable as any other city — London, New York, Tokyo or Madrid. We must adopt a sense of vigilance, a sense of alertness. Citizens should also be alert. Despite the best level of alertness, such incidents could occur, for which we are sorry. But let’s not get carried away thinking that Indian cities are more vulnerable.”He added that the Central intelligence agencies had clues about the Osho Ashram and the Chabad House being targets. “It is a fact that Headley had surveyed Chabad House. At the moment, it is a standalone fact. Whether this particular incident is related to the blast at German Bakery remains to be seen. It is premature to comment on that right now. We have to wait for the investigation to find out who is responsible for this incident,” said Mr Chidambaram, who added, “We want access to Headley for interrogation.” During his visit to Pune, Headley is believed to have stayed at the Osho Ashram, located extremely close to the German Bakery.Mr Chidambaram added that the Pune blast was a soft target attack — an “insidious” planting of a bomb in a “soft” target establishment — but it was not the result of any intelligence failure. The home minister said that while Osho Ashram and Chabad House were hard targets, the nearby German Bakery and Italian restaurants were soft targets frequented by numerous foreign nationals. The Koregaon Park area that is home to Chabad House and Osho Ashram had been sensitised by the police since it was on the “radar of terrorists”, but it was difficult to provide 24/7 security to all soft targets. “In such cases, establishments have to adopt their own security measures since it is not possible for the police to check every person, bag or place at all times. There is no intelligence failure, but please remember this is not an overt attack by gunmen. This is an insidious bomb that had been planted in what appears to be a backpack,” said Mr Chidambaram. The home minister did, however, say there was a need to improve intelligence-gathering mechanisms. “Intelligence has been improved, but there is indeed a need to improve intelligence. Just as is the case in every walk of life, where there is scope for improvement, in intelligence, too, we need improvement,” said Mr Chidambaram. The home minister added that a team from the newly-constituted National Investigation Agency team would assist the Maharashtra ATS in the probe. He appealed to the media to refrain from putting out speculative stories that could hamper the investigation process.
Age Correspondent