Usually after an act of terrorism the statements issued by the politicians go something like this "It is an act of cowardice and desperation." The same statements were issued after the explosions in Gujrat and I am sure to read something like this in the newspapers tomorrow for five blasts in New Delhi—three in Connaught Place, one in Gaffar Market, Karol Bagh and the third in M-Block Greater Kailash.
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I on the other hand feel that it is not an act of cowardice or desperation. The people behind these attacks no matter if it is the ISI, the Mujideens or the SIMI, knew very well what they are doing. They have carefully planned what they wanted to do and have managed to execute it to perfection as well.
The situation is that no one in the country feels safe anymore. After the explosions in Gujrat and Jaipur, people in smaller cities and towns have realized that they are no longer safe and this is something that has a very real chance of happening to them as well an not just to people in the metros or big cities. The people in big cities have their own fears. I for example think that being blown up in a train or a public place has much higher chances of killing me than old age or a disease. They terrorists have managed to scare the people and I guess that is what they wanted to do. I strongly believe that the explosions were low intensity because their motive was to scare people more than killing them. I am sure they could have found much deadlier bombs if that is what they wanted.
I am reminded of an article in India Today titled "Impotent India". It mentioned that inspire of being the biggest victim of Islamic terrorism, India has done nothing to solve the problem. Just how apathetic the government of India about this problem is evident in the number of people who cross the Indian border from Pakistan and Bangladesh. Not just coming here, a large number of those have ration cards, voter ID cards and live here as if they own this nation.
A few other things that bother me are
The unexploded bombs:
After Gujrat, the police found about a dozen or more bombs the next day which are a little hard to believe. All the bombs that went of did so within minutes of each other and all of them exploded in a time span of less than half an hour than how come the police was able to find unexploded bombs in the following days. On or two unexploded bombs can be explained as errors but here it seems like the terrorists were planting those bombs for cops to find...or was it the police that planted them first and then found them.
The warnings of bombs:
I was told by a few friends that they noticed exceptionally large number of cops on the railway stations on the day the bombs went of in Mumbai trains. This clearly shows that the cops knew what was going to happen and later the intelligence confirmed that they had warned the Maharashtra government of the same a long time ago but still the government took no action. How can that be explained?
Dealing with terrorism:
As an average citizen of India, I don't see any concrete steps being taken to curb terrorism. I don't hear about any illegal immigrants being sent back while I still hear about them crossing the border for coming here. What shocked me the most is the reason given behind lifting the ban on SIMI? They claimed that no SIMI member has been involved in any terrorist act since 2002. Sanjay Dutt and Salman Khan are still making trips to the courts for much smaller crimes committed long before 2002. Thank god the Supreme Court saw the light in time to impose that ban again.
