Evolution of Counterterrorism and Security in India
R.V. Raju
Former Director General of the National Investigation Agency of India
“Who lives if India dies? Who dies if India lives?”-Jawaharlal Nehru
India’s federal polity has clearly demarcated subjects that shall be the exclusive preserve of the central government and the state governments, as well as subjects over which both the central and state governments would have concurrent jurisdictions. These subjects figure in Lists I, II and III of the Seventh Schedule of the Indian Constitution. These Lists are called the Central List, the State List, and the Concurrent List, respectively. Public order and police figure as item numbers 1 and 2 of the State List. At the time of the promulgation of the Indian Constitution, the problems confronting the nation on the law and order front could be tackled by the criminal laws that were then in use, and the police machinery that was available to the central government and the governments in the states. The Indian Army was used to tackle the Naga insurgency in the Northeast. The controversial Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 was passed to empower the Armed Forces to tackle armed militancy in the Northeast, as the state government was found incapable of tackling militancy in the region.
Terrorism as we know it today raised its head in India in the early 1980s, in the North and the Northeast. The borders were porous, and hostile neighbors provided material support to the militants. Their initial targets were members of the security forces and noncombatants. However, it was not until the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards in October of 1984, that India enacted an anti-terror law, the controversial Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA) in 1987, with a sunset clause that it would be in force for two years from 24 May, 1987. This law was given an extension every two years until 1995. The assassination of Mrs. Gandhi was a direct consequence of Operation Blue Star in June of 1984. This Army operation took place in the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the holiest shrine of the Sikhs, which had been taken over by heavily armed Sikh militants. The operation led to damage to the buildings and deaths of hundreds of militants and devotees who were trapped in the Temple.
The TADA provided for admission of confessions, made before senior police officers of the rank of Superintendent of Police and above, as evidence in courts of law. In normal cases, the Indian Evidence Act bars confessions made before police officers from being used in trials. This special provision was made in the TADA, as witnesses were not willing to depose against terrorists in the courts. The TADA also provided for detention of accused persons in police custody for up to two months, compared with the normal provision of 15 days and for in-camera trial. The final report of the investigation could be filed in the court within a year’s time, as opposed to the normal period of 90 days, and during this period the accused would continue in judicial custody.
The National Security Guard Act was passed by the Indian Parliament in September of 1986, “to provide for the constitution and regulation of an armed force of the Union for combating terrorist activities with a view to protecting States against internal disturbance and for matters connected therewith.” According to the official website of the National Security Guard, the agency was set up with the specific purpose “to tackle all facets of terrorism in the country. Thus the primary role of this Force is to combat terrorism in whatever form it may assume in areas where activity of terrorists assumes serious proportions, and the State Police and other Central Police Forces cannot cope up [sic] with the situation. The NSG is a Force specially equipped and trained to deal with specific situations and is therefore, to be used only in exceptional situations.” Though the operational division of the NSG consisted of officers and men drawn from the Indian Army, officers and men were also taken on deputation from the paramilitary forces and the states, and it was headed by a senior police officer. One of the NSG’s important tests came in May of 1988, when the Golden Temple was once again occupied by militants. But this time, the Punjab police, led by the redoubtable police officer KPS Gill, together with the NSG, tired out the militants by means of a protracted siege denying them essentials, and calling on them to surrender. The ploy finally succeeded.
After the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the security detail of the prime minister was reorganized. A special force was created for the proximate security of the prime minister due to the incessant terrorist threats to his person. This force was called the Special Protection Group (SPG), and it was given statutory authority by an Act of Parliament, called the SPG Act, 1988. This Act ensured that there was no interference, either political or administrative, in the matter pertaining to the prime minister’s proximate security.
Throughout the 1980s, India faced terrorist attacks in its North and East. Moreover, Tamil militancy in Sri Lanka’s Northeast region had its own impact on South India, with thousands of Sri Lankan Tamils pouring into the State of Tamil Nadu, and the various Tamil militant groups setting up base there.
Punjab and Delhi bore the brunt of the terrorist attacks unleashed by Sikh militants, though the Chief of the Army Staff at the time of the Blue Star operation in the Golden Temple, General A K Vaidya, was killed by Sikh militants in Pune in August, 1986. While some of the sensational terrorist cases were investigated by India’s premier investigation agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), most of such cases were handled by the local or state police, which were ill equipped to tackle these cases. Police and law and order were state subjects according to the Indian Constitution, and as such, terrorist cases occurring in different states were registered in the local police stations and investigated by very junior officers. Very little, if any, use of forensic tools was made during investigations by the state police officers, and in most cases, such assistance was hardly available. The focus was invariably on maintaining law and order and providing security to VIPs, with investigations taking a backseat.
According to Mr. P. Chidambaram, India’s Home Minister who was addressing an elite gathering of India’s security bosses on the occasion of the Intelligence Bureau’s Centenary Endowment lecture in December 2009, the over 13,000 police stations in the country were functioning as islands. And, while there was better connectivity, there was no single system of data storage, data sharing, or accessing data. There was “no system under which one police station [could] talk to another directly.” There was ”no record of crimes or criminals that [could] be accessed by a Station House Officer, except the manual records relating to that police station.” Indian police were grossly understaffed, with about 142 policemen for every hundred thousand citizens, compared with 250 in Western countries. The police were badly equipped, with the majority of them armed with the obsolete .303 Royal Enfield rifles, without modern communication equipment or bulletproof jackets or helmets to take on heavily armed terrorists.
Thus, at the end of the 1980s, Punjab, Delhi, and the Northeast of India were severely affected by terrorism, and terrorist attacks had taken place in other parts of India as well. India’s counterterrorist architecture consisted of a highly proficient group to protect the person of the prime minister, giving him proximate security; a group to take on terrorists in exceptional circumstances like kidnappings and hijackings; and a law to deal with terrorist cases. But by and large, the police set-up in the States was not yet geared to take on the terrorists in India.
The Kashmiri insurgency, backed by training, funding, and material support from Pakistan, broke into the open in 1988–89 in the beautiful valley of Kashmir in North India. Selected killings of police personnel and well-known people like judges and politicians belonging to the minority community, as well as explosions in public places, heralded the commencement of this phase of the insurgency. Two books by eminent Pakistani Academic/Diplomat Hussain Haqqani and journalist Arif Jamal explain how the Pakistani military ruler, General Zia Ul-Haq, had planned to divert funds and arms received from foreign powers for the jihad in Afghanistan to conduct a jihad in Kashmir for its “liberation” and amalgamation with Pakistan. What is important here is the fact that the Jammu & Kashmir police, like the other police forces in the states of India, was totally unprepared to face terrorists armed with sophisticated AK 47s, rocket propelled guns, universal machine guns/Pika guns, grenades, and sophisticated communication equipment. The early years of militancy in Kashmir, therefore, saw the Indian Army and the paramilitary forces like the Border Security Force and the Central Reserve Police Force being used to tackle militant attacks in the valley of Kashmir. The Rashtriya Rifles, a subsidiary force of the Indian Army, was introduced in Kashmir during this phase of militancy. Ambushes and militant attacks with car bombs and other improvised explosive devices became common, and though the Armed Forces neutralized hundreds of armed militants and suffered losses themselves, there were also serious charges of human rights violations in the valley.
As mentioned earlier, police is a State subject, firmly under the control of the state governments. While everyone watched what was happening in the Punjab and in Jammu & Kashmir with concern, it did not strike any of the state governments that terrorism might spread to other parts of India. Each state government thought that their state was safe, and that terror would not ever find any place in their region. The extremist communist groups like the Peoples’ War of Andhra Pradesh had not grown into the menace that they have now become. In view of this, no attempt was made to draw lessons from the events in Punjab, Jammu & Kashmir, or the Northeast by any of the state police organizations. The only Indian security organization that made a serious study of militancy and terrorism was the Intelligence Bureau, which had some of the best police minds in India. But they only had an advisory role, sending warning signals to the central Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and the state governments on the basis of their intelligence reports and analytical assessments.
According to certain official reports, there were Pakistani attempts to link the Sikh militants with a pan-Indian extremist Islamic movement and the Students’ Islamic Movement of India, spreading this militant extremism across India. The demolition of the Babri Masjid, a three-hundred year old monument credited to the first Mughal Emperor of India, in December of 1992 by fanatical Hindu right-wing mobs brought a paradigm change in the situation, especially after communal riots broke out in the wake of the Masjid’s destruction targeting minority Muslims in places like Bombay.
The destruction of the Masjid and the subsequent riots targeting Muslims in Bombay (currently known as Mumbai) and other places led to radicalization of sections of the minority youth, and have been cited as causative factors for the serial Mumbai blasts that took place in March 1993, killing over 250 innocent people. This was the most devastating terrorist attack to take place in India up to that time, and easily one of the worst in the world. Subsequent investigations revealed a nexus between terrorism and organized crime, the latter being led by the notorious Mumbai Don Dawood Ibrahim, currently based in Pakistan, whose smuggling network was used to bring into Mumbai huge quantities of RDX and a large number of AK 56 rifles.
While Jammu & Kashmir saw an escalation of cross-border terrorism, there were terrorist attacks in other parts of India as well. These included the assassinations of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi by a suicide bomber of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a terrorist group of Sri Lanka, near Chennai in South India in May 1991; the assassination of Chief Minister Beant Singh of Punjab by terrorists of the Babbar Khalsa International in August 1995; the Coimbatore blasts of February 1998; the attack on scientists in the Indian Institute of Science in December 2005; attacks on local trains in Mumbai in July 2006; and attacks in crowded markets and religious places in different cities of India. Even though there was a highly professional group with statutory powers for the proximate security of the prime minister, the shortsightedness of Indian politicians came through in the fact that the law was made applicable only to serving prime ministers. The SPG Act was introduced in the Parliament when Rajiv Gandhi was the prime minister, as he was facing threats from several terrorist groups. Though there were voices in Parliament which asked that the law be made applicable to former prime ministers as well, they were ignored, due to the pervasive belief that Rajiv Gandhi would continue as prime minister for a long time to come. He was, however, defeated in the elections held in 1989, and the SPG cover given to him was withdrawn. Had the SPG cover been provided to him when he was on election tour in May 1991, the suicide bomber would not have had the opportunity to attack him.
In May 1995, the TADA lapsed due to the sunset clause incorporated in the law. This was due to serious and well-founded allegations of misuse of the law against minority community members, as well as general opposition to the law.The expiration of TADA was followed by the passing of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) in 2002, amidst widespread opposition, by the right wing Bharatiya Janata Party Government. The POTA incorporated some safeguards, however, as soon as the United Progressive Alliance Government took over the reins of the central government in May 2004, one of its first acts was to withdraw the POTA. Thus, though India continued to face serious terrorist problems, there was no consistency in government thinking about having a law to tackle it. On top of it all, the Supreme Court of India, while disposing of the appeal of the accused in the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi by a suicide bomber, held, in its order of May 1999, that the assassination had not been a “terrorist act” as defined in the TADA which was the law that had been applied in the case! To think that it was the first human bomb used to assassinate a political leader who was a former prime minister, and that nine police officers, including the district superintendent of police perished in the bomb attack along with Rajiv Gandhi, and yet it was not deemed to be a terrorist act! It took over eight years following the assassination for the Supreme Court to confirm the conviction in the case and uphold the death sentences handed down to four of the twenty-six accused who had faced trial. In one of these cases, the death has since been commuted to a life sentence. In the case of the other three, there are fierce discussions in the media that they have been wrongly convicted and should be set free, although due process of law had been clearly observed in both letter and spirit throughout the trial and appeal process.
Later in 1999, an Indian Airlines flight from Kathmandu on the way to Lucknow was hijacked by Pakistani terrorists in order to secure the release of Maulana Masood Azhar and Omar Sheikh (later involved in the killing of U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl) from Indian prisons. The flight was stopped for refueling in Amritsar for a short while, but the Indian Crisis Management Group fumbled and miserably failed to dispatch the NSG to tackle the terrorists. The government finally had to buckle under public/media pressure and release three hard core terrorists, including Masood Azhar and Sheikh Omar, one a Pakistani and the other a Briton of Pakistani origin. Masood Azhar was to later form the Jaish-e-Mohammad, a terrorist outfit responsible for the attack on the Indian Parliament on 13 December 2001, and the Jammu & Kashmir Legislative Assembly earlier in October of that year, while Omar Saeed Sheikh was held in Pakistan for the murder of journalist Daniel Pearl.
Thus despite being subjected to terrorist attacks in Punjab, Jammu & Kashmir, India’s financial capital Mumbai, and several Indian cities, as well as on iconic Indian targets, India did not have a consistent counterterrorism policy or architecture to fight terrorists. State police organizations continued to be neglected, and no expertise was built either for investigation of terrorist crimes or to fight terrorist attacks, with only a few honorable exceptions.
Historically, Indian borders have been notoriously porous, and this fact has helped in pushing in militants into J&K and other border regions. A fence has now been built at the borders—including in J&K, except where the terrain is not suitable for fencing—to prevent cross-border movement of terrorists. While this has not completely stopped militant movement, there has been some positive check on movement into India. The Border Security Force, the Sashastra Seema Bal, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, and the Assam Rifles guard the various borders of India. The Central Industrial Security Force has been trained to guard sensitive installations and industrial complexes, including airports, most of which have come under terrorist attacks or threats.
The southern state of Andhra Pradesh had been bedevilled by the extremist communist movement, Peoples’ War Group (PWG), since the early eighties. There were strong indications of the Sri Lankan Tamil militant group LTTE colluding with the Peoples’ War, training them in launching improvised explosive devices, and supplying them with sophisticated AK47 assault rifles. A study of casualties inflicted on Indian security forces by the PWG since 1989, when this collusion was suspected, would show the increase in casualties among security forces due to the extensive use of IEDs by this group. The PWG developed deep roots in the state. The primary causes for the rise of the extremist communist movements like the PWG are lack of governance and land reforms. The Andhra Police have an exclusive force, the Greyhounds, set up to fight the PWG in its own backyard. This force was trained in jungle warfare, like the PWG, and learned to survive in jungles for days and weeks at a time. The strength of the Greyhounds was the intelligence network that the Andhra police had developed exclusively to deal with the PWG. Political governments, including the Congress party and the Telugu Desom, attempted to enter into talks with the group, but were unsuccessful, as the group only believed in displacing the democratically elected government through the use of guns. Participation in the talks was used as a tactic by the PWG to gain time to consolidate or replace resources, or to escape the net drawn by the Greyhounds to trap and eliminate them. The PWG succeeded in killing scores of politicians, including members of Parliament and ministers of the government of Andhra Pradesh. There was a murderous attempt on the life of Chandra Babu Naidu, then Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, who survived the attempt by a whisker. The Andhra Police has succeeded in driving out the bulk of the PWG from Andhra, but they have spread to other states from where they are directing the movement. The states of Chhatisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, and West Bengal are seriously or partially affected by Naxal trouble.
The other exception to the development of expertise in dealing with terrorism is the Jammu & Kashmir police. This organization was drawn into the mainstream to fight militancy after being kept out for over three years from 1990 to 1993. The J&K police rapidly developed local sources, and based on pinpointed information, began targeting and eliminating militant leaders. There were threats to the force and members of their families. But the police leadership, with firm grounding in the state, rose to the occasion and devised means to protect their men who fought the terrorists. The Special Operations Group (SOG) of the J&K police became the lead agency in the campaign against terrorism, and soon the army and the paramilitary forces were vying with each other to partner with the SOG. Bulletproof jackets, vehicles, and the best arms were made available to the force to take on the militants. The SOG generated its own information, and soon allegations of human rights violations started emerging against officers of the SOG, which had to be countered. While individual aberrations in the conduct of the SOG have taken place and been dealt with, by and large the SOG has distinguished itself as an outstanding operational unit in all major cities and towns of Jammu & Kashmir. The Union Home Ministry gave generous funds to the J&K police under modernization grants, which enabled the police to upgrade their police stations, other police buildings, police housing, and vital equipment needed to take on the militants.
The Lashkar-e-Taiba’s (LeT) assault on India’s financial capital of Mumbai on 26 November 2008 was perhaps the most devastating terrorist attack in the world, after 9/11. In this assault, 10 men of the LeT, armed with sophisticated AK 47s, grenades, improvised explosive devices, and communication equipment, including mobile phones with Indian SIM cards, landed in a dinghy near Colaba on the Mumbai coast. Working in pairs, the terrorists went about mowing down civilians at different sites, including iconic hotels like the Taj and Oberoi. They held the nation hostage for some 60 hours, by which time about 166 persons, including several foreigners, had been killed. The operation was shown live on TV, and reflected poorly on the preparedness of Indian security agencies and their ability to quickly counter the raiders. This happened despite warnings from the Americans that a seaborne jihadi assault on Mumbai was in the offing. Later investigations established that the LeT assault team had hijacked an Indian fishing vessel, Kuber, the crew of which, excluding the captain, were killed. The captain was forced to navigate the vessel until it approached the Mumbai coast. Thereafter, the captain’s throat was slit and his body abandoned in the Kuber itself. The terrorists used a dinghy to cover the remaining distance to the coast. The arrest in the United States of David Coleman Headley, aka Daood Gilani, a U.S. citizen of Pakistani origin, for conducting surveillance of targets in Mumbai for the LeT’s attacks in November 2008, and for surveillance of the Jyllands Posten newspaper office in Denmark, selected as a target by the jihadis for publishing cartoons of the Prophet of Islam, brought out links to the Pakistani spy agency, the ISI, in the Mumbai attacks and the planned attacks in Denmark. Both the U.S. federal agency and the National Investigation Agency of India have filed charge sheets in the courts against the ISI officers and others for the Mumbai attacks of November 2008.
There were dozens of landing points for fishing vessels in Mumbai where there were no police posts to conduct any checks. One recalls the ease with which sophisticated arms and explosives were landed on the Indian coast in early 1993 by the Dawood Ibrahim network, just before the Mumbai serial blasts of March 1993. From March 1993 to November 2008, there were still no police posts in place to check the unmanned landing points for fishing vessels. It was only following Mumbai’s 26/11 attack that certain measures were taken to upgrade coastal security in India, including additional patrolling by the Indian Navy and Indian Coast Guard (ICG) aircraft and ships. A new force, called the Marine Police, would patrol the 12 nautical mile area of India’s territorial waters. Radar was to be set up all along the coast, which would detect ships at between 30 to 50 nautical miles. Through the use of this technology, as well as shipborne and airborne radar, details about the crew, cargo, movement, last port of call, and next port of call of these ships would be obtained through the Automatic Identification System (AIS).This system is triggered by radar pulses from the aforementioned sources. According to a report, “the coastal radar chain was to have an optronic sensor which would enable the display of TV-like images of ships and fishing vessels in India’s territorial waters. Any vessel not triggering an AIS response on the radar screen would be immediately stopped and searched.” Additional trained manpower, patrol ships, and boats, along with fishermen all along the coast have been brought into this security grid adding muscle to the coastal security. But the implementation of this network will take time, and already three years have gone by since the Mumbai attack. In the meantime, two abandoned ships, MV Wisdom and MV Pavit, recently floated into the Mumbai coast undetected, questioning the efficacy of the various measures that have been put in place to date.
For the first time, after seeing the rampaging terrorists destroy life and property in Mumbai, the states, which used to jealously guard their rights under the Constitution, kept quiet as the new National Investigation Agency (NIA) Act was passed and some teeth were added to the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) by an amendment in the Parliament just weeks after the 26/11 attack. According to the new Act, the Ministry of Home Affairs could direct the NIA to take over any terror-related case from any state without that state government’s consent, though police and police work, including investigation, are state subjects under the Constitution. This Act was passed not by amending the Constitution, which would have been the right way of doing it, but by invoking Article 253 of the Constitution, which empowers Parliament to make laws for the whole or any part of the territory of India in order to implement any treaty, agreement, or convention with any other country or countries, or to ratify decisions made at any international conference. Sooner or later, one or more state governments may challenge this Act on the ground that it was against the federal spirit of the Constitution. The amended UAPA gives police the ability to keep an accused person in custody for 30 days, compared with the normal 15 days, and charges could be brought against the accused within 180 days, as opposed to the normal 90 days. However, confessions made by accused before police officers, even of superior rank, are not admissible in courts.
In short, the anti-terror architecture in the country consists of the amended law to deal with terrorists, which is not as strong as the TADA or POTA were. India has an agency exclusively to deal with terrorist cases, but it cannot suo moto take up terrorist cases; it can take up cases only when the Ministry of Home Affairs directs it to do so by a written order. The foundations of the UAPA are weak, as it was not passed by amending the Constitution, and therefore the MHA itself is not sure which cases it should transfer to the NIA! After the NIA was set up in January of 2009, there have been several major terrorist incidents, in Pune and Mumbai, and a few in Delhi. Only one of these cases was given to the NIA for investigation. Following India’s 26/11, at which time the counterterrorist force NSG took several hours to reach Mumbai from Delhi, it was decided to set up NSG hubs in Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Kolkata.
There are anti-terrorist units in most states, and some of them are doing exceptionally well, like the West Bengal unit. Whether these anti-terror units can take on the terrorists in an urban or rural setting remains to be seen. The Maharashtra Police have set up a separate unit, called Force I, to fight the terrorists. They have been equipped with modern weapons and armor to defend them against terrorist fire, but they do not have any field exposure. It would be a good idea if such units trained alongside Jammu & Kashmir’s Special Operation Groups, which have been fighting terrorists over the last fifteen years, and have been coming out on top.
The NIA has been organizing regional conferences to create coordination between themselves and these anti-terrorist units in the states. Officers of other relevant agencies, including the Narcotics Control Bureau, Customs, and Central Excise have also been participating in these conferences. Intelligence sharing has become more effective, with the Multi-Agency Centre in the Intelligence Bureau having been reactivated and the subsidiary centers in the states doing similar work.
In the meantime, two of Home Minister P. Chidambaram’s pet projects are taking shape, though not as originally envisaged by him. One of these projects is the NATGRID, or national intelligence grid. This agency was to bring together 21 different databases, including banking, insurance, immigration, income tax, telephone, rail and road travel, credit card accounts, passport and visa records, pan card details, voter card details, land records, and drivers’ license records, and provide access to 11 security agencies, including the newly created National Investigation Agency. This would be of significant assistance to these agencies during investigation of cases, though its usefulness for preventing terrorist attacks is questionable. After much debate, the Home Ministry was able to allay fears expressed by other sections of the government in regard to privacy of individuals, following which the Cabinet Committee of Security (CCS) cleared the first two phases of the project. The next two phases of the project will be cleared after the proposal is resubmitted to the CCS, and some changes in existing laws may be required.
But the most important counterterrorism project of the Home Minister, the setting up of the National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC), has had a checkered growth. In the Intelligence Bureau Centenary Endowment Lecture in December 2009, Mr. Chidambaram announced the ambitious NCTC project, setting a timetable of one year to get it going. But after three years, there is a much more modest NCTC than he had envisioned set up within the Intelligence bureau, which has powers of arrest, searches, and seizure under the provisions of existing laws, in addition to its functions of coordinating the collection and dissemination of intelligence. This has invited severe criticism from the government’s coalition ally, the Trinamool Congress, as well as the opposition, and the Centre’s operationalization, which was to begin on 1 March 2012, has been put on hold. It is doubtful if it will be put into action unless this provision of arrest, searches, and seizure is given up as demanded by the opposition, and even the government’s ally in the name of preserving the federal structure of the Constitution.
Thus, India has the Army, the Border Security Force, the Indo-Tibetan Border Force, the Sashastra Seema Bal, the Assam Rifles, and the Navy and Coast Guard to guard its land and maritime boundaries. India has so far not faced any terrorist attack from the sky other than hijackings of aircraft, which took place due to failure at checkpoints. The Rashtriya Rifles, which is a subsidiary of the Indian Army, the CRPF, and the state police forces perform counterterrorism and insurgency duties in states like Jammu & Kashmir, which are affected by terrorism. The National Security Guards, Rashtriya Rifles, and Special Operations Groups aided by the CRPF in states like Jammu & Kashmir take on terrorists when there are encounters in built-in areas. The Central Industrial Security Force protects vital installations that are under terrorist threat. The Intelligence Bureau, the Research & Analysis Wing, Military Intelligence, the CID Special Branch in the states, and the District Special Branch provide the intelligence back up to the men in the field. New units like the National Investigation Agency, the NATGRID, and the NCTC set up in the wake of the Mumbai terrorist attacks, are yet to prove their mettle. The NCTC is already mired in controversy. The NSG hubs have started functioning from Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Kolkata, but skeptics point out the traffic snarls in these cities, and claim it would take hours for the NSG to reach a given point where their services may be required, even within the cities in which they are stationed. Only a fresh crisis triggered by terrorists would allow us to measure the success of the steps taken so far, and whether the antiterror law currently in operation would be sufficient to give legal cover to the steps to counter terror that have been taken.
One serious problem that security planners face in India is the lack of a national political consensus on security issues, whether these issues deal with jihadist terror or Naxalite terror. Individual states view security issues through the prism of federalism, while politicians look at them from the standpoint of vote banks, with elections being held for either the state assemblies or the Parliament in almost every calendar year, forgetting that these issues threaten the very existence of the country. It is vital that India learns to work out a minimum political consensus to build a robust security architecture which can successfully thwart any terrorist attempt to destabilize the country, and the earlier this is done, the better.
Chapter 54 - McGraw-Hill Homeland Security Handbook, 2nd Edition