Getting back to the basics

By Radhavinod Raju

As international pressure mounts on Pakistan’s army and the ISI to rein in the Lashkar-e-Toiba, they will mount pressure on their Indian cells manned by the Indian Mujahideen to strike in different cities at times of their choosing. They can thereby deny any role in terrorist activities in India. A number of Indians, other than from Kashmir, have gone across to Pakistan for training and have returned. We have former and current DGPs of a southern state on record that boys from Kerala have been trained by the ISI in Pakistan. Five Keralites had gone to Kashmir for training with the LeT in the second half of 2008, of whom four were killed in an encounter by the security forces. Youth from Gujarat, UP, Hyderabad and other centres are known to have received training in Pakistan. Training is also being imparted to boys in India clandestinely in bomb-making and other acts of sabotage. The Students Islamic Movement of India’s training camps in Kerala, Gujarat and Karnataka, where over 30 boys from different states participated are subjects of a charge-sheet filed by the National Investigation Agency in Kochi.

There are sleeper cells with Pakistani members in some cities. One such cell with eight Pakistanis was busted in Delhi some years back. Their contact from Pakistan with `5 lakh in fake currency and 36 Chinese pistols had been picked up by the J&K police, and through information gleaned from the contact, the cell in Delhi was busted and the Pakistanis arrested. One of them had married a local girl and had settled in Delhi for years. It was later established that they were involved in heroin smuggling and had engineered several bomb blasts in and around Delhi. Recently, there was a blast in a car near Udhampur in J&K. The police diligently worked out clues and unearthed a sleeper cell in Jammu. A Pakistan national had been working in the cell, and had settled in Jammu for a few years.

While we have strengthened our borders by fencing and increased surveillance, the Coast Guard has been strengthened and the NSG hubs have been opened in major cities, we are yet to look at basic policing, like investigation and intelligence gathering at the district and state levels. This is vital if we are to prevent attacks such as the 13/7 Mumbai blasts. The signal success of the Andhra Pradesh police against the Peoples’ War Group (PWG) is due to the dedicated efforts of the unit of the state CID which focuses on gathering intelligence against the PWG. They have successfully penetrated the PWG and have conducted operations even outside Andhra Pradesh to capture or neutralise wanted cadres.

Militancy and terrorism have been controlled in Jammu & Kashmir and to a considerable extent it is due to the efforts of the J&K police in collecting pinpointed information against terrorists and their hideouts. The J&K police is the spearhead of the anti-militancy drive in the state. Every state and district should be similarly prepared to tackle terrorism, for terrorists can strike anywhere. Every police station should become the centre of anti-terrorist activity, including, where necessary, in de-radicalisation of extremists. Police station registers contain information of births and deaths, mixture of population community-wise, records of good and bad characters, missing persons and so on within their respective jurisdictions. There are systems by which information about bad people is circulated among police stations, and watch kept on the activities of such people.

The strength of the police station should reflect the population mix of the region, so that there will be members of the force with links of communication within every community in the region. A few years back, there were reports in the media that though the population of Malegaon was over 70 percent Muslim, only about 10 percent of the police force was from that community. It is imperative to get continuous flow of information about each group, its activities, its extremist links, persons missing from that group, newcomers with suspicious  background and so on. Each community should feel bound to help the police in tackling terrorist crimes. It would be easier for them to have stakes in the success of the police when members of their own community play important roles as members of the police force.

The NSG and commandos would be useless when terrorists take to planting improvised explosive devices in crowded places and then disappearing into the crowds. Strengthening of borders, both land and sea, would also be of no help when home grown extremists resort to terror, though on the bidding of foreign forces. They can be tackled only by strengthening the local police.

Terrorist crimes have to be investigated professionally, by collecting forensic and other physical evidence from the spot, and also identifying and examining relevant witnesses. Investigation is actually the pursuit of truth, to know how and why an incident took place, what is the modus operandi, who are the perpetrators, whether there are local support bases, and so on. The affected community should have faith in the fairness and transparency of the investigation process. Both investigation and the subsequent prosecution have to be sustained and relentless till the final court verdict. Only when this happens would the affected community itself rise against the radical elements within it, and cooperate with the police, either to bring the radical elements back into the mainstream, or to have them dealt with in accordance with law.

On the other hand, we are yet to try and punish the accused for the destruction of the Babri Masjid. The Supreme Court has to pursue cases of atrocities against Muslims in Gujarat as the state has failed to protect them. Though it is known that the Malegaon blast was the handiwork of Hindu extremists, Muslim youth already arrested in the case are yet to be released. This has led to the minorities losing faith in the state and its coercive arm, the police. This is unfortunate. Such perceptions impact on young minds, some of which fall prey to radical elements, who are exploited by our enemies. The LTTE had a lot of admirers in this country for fighting on behalf of the Tamils of Sri Lanka. But the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi and the following investigation which established their role in it, wiped out the public support that the LTTE had in Tamil Nadu. This was pristine police work, carried out honestly and professionally. We thus have excellent examples of intelligence collection, penetration of terrorist groups and professional investigation in India. Such police work has to be the rule, and not the exception as it is now.

New Indian Express

28th July 2011