I was having lunch on Friday when I saw the news flashing on the television in my company’s food court, of bombs going on in Bangalore. I called a couple of friends in Bangalore to discover that they had no idea about the mayhem that was about to follow. By late evening it was clear that Bangalore had become a sitting target for terror outfits that are now operating with outmost impunity.
Any self-respecting nation in the world prides itself in protecting its people. Except India. Here we protect only the VIPs who include politicians of every shade and colour. Politicians many of whom have shady past, a criminalised present and what will be an ominous future.
Take terror trials from the Mumbai blasts which were attributed to the D Gang, and which to some extent has the arrests and conviction of a few of those involved. But here again, the big fish got away. Remember the response by the Israeli nation to the Munich Olympics massacre. Golda Meir, then Israeli prime Minister ordered that whosoever involved in the killing of innocent Israeli athletes had to pay for it, no matter where they were and how long it took. In the months and years that followed Israeli intelligence, counter intelligence forces combed every corner of the world and killed each and every one of those terrorists. That is the response of any nation which values the life of each and every citizen. Not in our country, for here life comes cheap. What’s to worry for Shivraj Patil and other if a few hundreds are killed in bomb blasts. As the old saying goes "when one person is killed it is a tragedy, when hundreds die, it’s a statistic.”
The plain and simple fact is that we have failed as a nation when it comes to preventing and then solving terrorist crimes. Simply, we don’t have the commitment, we don’t have the guts. Government after government has come up with high sounding slogans and press notes on how they were going to deal with crimes against unsuspecting civilians who have nothing to do the entire affair.
What we need a strong source of forewarning with actionable intelligence, which include intercepts, locating sleepr cells and penetration of the jihadi hierarchy. We also should have a response mechanism that deals with the aftermath of a string of bombs. After every bombing we have seen panic and mayhem, with everyone walking over the scene of the crime and destroying crucial pieces of evidence.
Look at the way Israelis or the British responded when bombings happened in their backyard. There was no panic and there was a plan. Crowds in those countries do not rush to the scene of offence and block traffic. Instead, a trained team takes over the rescue with paramedics and ambulances treating the injured on the spot before moving them to the hospitals. Compare that with the way the 108 EMRI ambulances which were hopelessly caught in a traffic jam when the Mecca Masjid blast took place. And worse was to come when the crowds near the masjid started to throw stones breaking the windshields of the ambulances that were rushing to ferry the injured.
The scene of crime is the most crucial part of any investigation, and here again we fail as a nation. We let anybody and everybody walk across the place where the bombing has occurred. Every microscopic piece of remnant tells a story. In the case of the bombing of the Pan Am jet over Lockerbie in Scotland, the two Libyans who were responsible for placing the bomb were traced from the last three digits of a small piece of transistor. This piece of the transistor which was the size of a thumbnail, and among the 35,000 pieces of fragments that investigators picked up from a 15 sq km area in which the jet fell from the sky. Investigators working backwards found traces of explosive on that transistor, which was a part of a tape recorder, which was used a timer to set off the bomb which resulted in the destruction of the passenger jet. From the transistor, they found out the make of the tape recorder, worked with Japanese manufacturer, who told them that they had shipped it to a distributor who had in turn sold it to a shop in a Middle East country. The two bombers who had loaded up the bomb in the aircraft had purchased the tape recorder with a credit card from that shop. All Scotland Yard had to do now was to find the owner of that credit card. That is what is called an professional investigation. It took years, but the culprits were caught, eventually.
In our country, everyone from the police commissioner to the constable pose for the television cameras with the remnants of the bomb or looking at one as if it was the Kohinoor diamond. That is destruction of evidence and if you ask me, all those who do that should be booked under the relevant act. After the Mecca Masjid blast, one of the Hyderabad city's law and order DCP walked all the way from Masjid to the Charminar Police station with an unexploded bomb in his hand. He made sure that a horde of TV and Press cameramen and hundreds of by-standers followed him in the walk, making him look like a James Bond. The DCP did not have the common sense to leave the bomb where it was found and let the disposal experts take it over. It could have burst while he was parading with it killing tens if not hundreds.
The same misplaced sense of priority was displayed when the bombs when off at Lumbini Park laser show. VIPs and their chamchas were allowed to stroll across the site posing for the TV cameras, thereby destroying evidence. One Circle inspector picked up a piece of the exploded device and ran with it to his jeep like a kid who had got his birthday gift, with the television cameras running after him in tow. It looked funny, foolish and amateurish. To put it plain and simple, our law and order police officials are not trained in the art of forensic investigation. The frequent transfers ensure that they don’t specialize in any aspect of the police force. One year they would be in the law and order and then they would be shunted to special branch, then a couple of in years in traffic, then VIP security – all of which ensures that they remain a jack of all and a master of none.
If it was Bangalore on Friday and Ahmedabad on Saturday, it can be any other city in the days to come. Like all other bomb blast investigations, these will also end up going nowhere. That’s a sad story of our nation. Pity, we still don’t seem to be learning from it and that has made the terrorists even more bolder. They know they can never be caught by the ham handed Indian police establishment which does not know the difference between a Diwali Firecracker and RDX.
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