Terrorist acts

Hardly had the reverberation of the seven or eight serial blasts in IT city of Bangalore in the south, killing two innocent lives and more than twenty injured died down, the northern city of Ahmedabad of Gujarat was rocked by eighteen serial blasts within a period of ninety minutes in crowded market places, buses,hospital premises taking a toll of 29 lives and injuring more than hundred persons. On May 13 last the pink city of Jaipur witnessed similar serial blasts killing 65 persons and injuring more than 250 persons. The Indian Mujaheedin-a little known group claimed responsibility of the Ahmedabad blasts as they did in case of Jaipur blasts. All these terrorist acts of violence appeared to be well coordinated and master minded by well known terrorist groups like Lasker –e-Taiba or HUJI and implemented with the help of local sleeper cells organised by the proscribed organisation Student Islamic Movement of India (SIMI).After every such incident, the Central government invariably takes the credit that the State governments were warned in advance about possible terror attack. The Central government claimed to have sent advisory to Karnataka and Gujarat about possible terror attack implying thereby that such advisories were not taken seriously by the concerned governments. The State’s response was also in familiar lines-there are little actionable intelligence to act. The BJP blamed the Central government for repealing stringent Act like POTA for increase in terrorist violence. Instead of indulging in blame games the country should ponder dispassionately as to how to prevent such crimes in future.It is unfortunate that investigations into all these terrorist acts entrusted to the respective State police have not been able to bring the culprits to book. The Special Task Force created in UP and Rajasthan to investigate UP serial blasts and Jaipur serial blasts have been groping in the dark so far and could not pin point any organisation or penetrate the sleeper cells. As the Prime Minister suggested earlier there is need for a Federal Agency to investigate all such terrorist crimes. The State governments lack modern tools of investigation of such crimes and did not have trained investigators and resources. The State agencies do not share information with their counter parts. Lack of supervision and coordination of the State investigation agencies have proved costly in investigation of such terrorist crimes. Law and order is a State subject and the States are reluctant to part with their powers. But terrorist acts are no ordinary crimes and deserve to be declared Federal Crimes and investigated by a Federal Agency. The Home Ministry may examine this issue and take early decision in the matter. source: assam tribune