Date:31/12/2005 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2005/12/31/stories/2005123106191400.htm

National

Flaws in counter-terror practices

Praveen Swami

Home Ministry orders review of procedures in major cities Bangalore police did not once send officials to Jammu and Kashmir to independently develop the inputs on the growing terrorist threat to the city

NEW DELHI: Responding to growing disquiet over the Bangalore police's handling of intelligence warnings that preceded Wednesday's attack on the Indian Institute of Science, the Union Home Ministry has ordered a review of counter-terrorism procedures in all major cities.

At meetings between Home Ministry bureaucrats and intelligence officials, two major structural problems have been identified in the events leading up to the Bangalore attack. First, police authorities in Karnataka failed to pursue intelligence leads about the terrorist threat to Bangalore and other cities in the State. Second, counter-terrorism police practices that have become routine in other major cities do not seem to have been rigorously enforced in Bangalore, despite information that top terrorist commanders regularly visited India's information technology capital.

Police forces from areas that have faced significant levels of terrorist activity have developed informal liaison procedures, which allow them to share operationally useful information and discuss threat perceptions. Officers from the Delhi police, Andhra Pradesh police, Gujarat police and Greater Mumbai police consult their counterparts in Jammu and Kashmir on counter-terror issues, often travelling to the State to develop intelligence leads or participate in interrogation of suspects who were believed to be active in their areas of responsibility.

4 warnings this year alone

Other States, including Karnataka, have not till now perceived the need for such interaction. The Bangalore police authorities did not once send officials to Jammu and Kashmir to independently develop the inputs on the growing terrorist threat to the city that it had received from the Intelligence Bureau since 2001. At least four separate warnings of an imminent strike on information-technology facilities were issued this year alone, the last on the basis of interrogation of three Harkat-ul-Jihad terrorists arrested from Kolkata and Hyderabad.

While the Lashkar-e-Taiba, rather than the Harkat-u-Jihad, is thought to have executed the attack on the IISc, officials noted that the Bangalore police's handling of the last warning illustrated what they described as a casual approach to counter-terrorism. In late October, the police arrested three alleged Harkat terrorists, Bangladeshi national Hilaluddin Khan, Kolkata resident Nafiqul Biswas and Hyderabad-based Mohammad Ibrahim. Although all three said their organisation had intended to target Bangalore, the city police did not seek to interrogate them.

Casual policing

Sources in the Union Home Ministry told The Hindu they were especially concerned over the Bangalore police's failure to practise routine counter-terrorism procedures in response to the alerts. These include both technical measures, such as increased random surveillance of telephone calls to Jammu and Kashmir or Pakistan, and manpower-intensive practices such as a comprehensive verification of guests at hotels. While such procedures do not make cities wholly safe against terrorist strikes, they do put in place an additional layer of defence against potential attackers.

Although law and order is a State responsibility, counter-terrorism experts have long felt the need for a dramatic enhancement of India's national police capabilities to deal with new challenges. As a consequence of the findings of the Girish Saxena Committee on Intelligence Reforms, whose recommendations were accepted by the Government in February 2001, the Intelligence Bureau set up the Multi Agency Centre, which collates terrorism-related information from across India, and the Joint Task Force on Intelligence, responsible for disseminating this to the States on a real-time basis.

No real-time database

However, due to protracted bureaucratic wrangles over funding for these bodies, both organisations remain understaffed and ill-funded.

As a result India, unlike almost any other major country, does not have a nationwide real-time counter-terrorism database.

Similarly, no city has put in place crisis-response protocols to deal with what experts describe as catastrophic terrorist acts, such as bombings using chemical or biological weapons.