Tracing Virtual Footprints

It is now almost rhetorical to ask after each series of blasts if they could have actually been prevented and the terrorists nabbed. It seems there was enough intelligence to suggest that the national capital was very much on the Indian Mujahideen (IM) list of targets. However, a failure to share this critical information in time eliminated whatever chance there might have been of pre-empting it. The interrogation reports of those arrested after the Ahmedabad blasts had clear pointers that Delhi would be hit, but they were ironically sent to the Delhi police three days after the September 13 strike. Trawling through these intelligence/interrogation reports, investigators have now homed in on Mumbai-based Abdus Subhan Qureshi, alias Tauqeer Bilal (see Terror is Just a RegularFace). He has been identified as the mastermind behind the Delhi blasts and the man who sent the e-mail minutes before the first bomb exploded in Ghaffar Market in Delhi.

This isn’t the first time that Tauqeer’s name has surfaced in intelligence records, it has been duly cropping up in investigations subsequent to the 2006 Mumbai blasts. Intelligence sources believe him to be a member of an ultra-violent faction led by SIMI general secretary Safdar Nagori that had splintered from the main group in early 2006. Tauqeer is allegedly part of the four-man committee set up to aid Nagori’s work and to raise a group that could seek vengeance for perceived wrongs against the Muslim community. Other key members of this committee include: Abu Bashar, arrested by the Gujarat police from Azamgarh in UP; Kerala-based Shibly Peedicaal Abdul and Qayamuddin Kapadia from Gujarat. Earlier, on August 25, the Rajasthan police had picked up Shabaaz Khan, believed to be the national president of the group and the mastermind behind the Jaipur blasts.

Tauqeer’s job, investigators told Outlook, was to deal with the media and also to seek cooperation from terrorist groups abroad. He is believed to have had several meetings with key members of the Lashkar-e-Toiba, suspected of funding as well as setting up the ideological framework of the IM. His e-mails have material lifted from jehadi websites and blogs, several of which are under investigation. Ironically, both Tauqeer and Bashar were in Delhi between July 24 and 26, information that was available with the Gujarat police but never shared with the special cell in Delhi, tasked with investigating and preventing terror cases in the capital. The Gujarat police, tracking Bashar on their own, had arrested him on August 16. He is now being brought to Delhi to get fresh leads into the case.

There is a wealth of information coming out of the internal security apparatus now that the blasts in Delhi have happened. For instance, the agencies had information that the Nagori faction held 12 major training camps between 2006 and 2008, the two most recent ones being in Kerala in December 2007 and another on January 13 and 14 in Halol near Vadodara, Gujarat. At these camps, new volunteers were reportedly put through activities like rock-climbing, target practice and river-crossing. The shrewdest, the most courageous and motivated were said to have been chosen to be trained in handling explosives.

Assembling the kind of bomb that was used in the Delhi blasts—a mixture of ammonium nitrate paste, ball bearings, detonators, timers and a 9-volt battery—would take just about half-an-hour, say experts. Incidentally, the bombs used in Jaipur, Ahmedabad and Delhi were clones of each other; not just that, the Delhi and Ahmedabad bombs even have a common fingerprint. The IM, investigators feel, could be in possession of 50 more such bombs and next on their hitlist could be Mangalore and Mumbai.

India’s state of preparedness on the internal security front can be found reflected in the health of the intelligence apparatus. The systematic decimation of the capabilities of our two prime intelligence agencies—RAW and the IB—partly explains the lack of any clear strategy to fight terrorism. The IB, struggling to constantly upgrade its technical intelligence wings, has had to divert funds and manpower for this. It has not received any major sanctions for augmenting its resources. "It took the Ahmedabad blasts to finally get a long-pending proposal for additional manpower sanctioned by the home ministry," a senior intelligence official told Outlook. Where the bureau sought 4,000 new posts, the government, rattled by the Ahmedabad serial strike, sanctioned an additional thousand. But, says the official, "it is too late because this manpower will be inducted in batches and training them will take more time. Which means we can use them effectively only by 2012."

The IB’s ambitious plan to connect all states and other central agencies for real-time intelligence-sharing has also been bogged down by the lack of funding. The Multi-Agency Centre (MAC) still does not have the hardware or the software to enable its functioning as a national information coordination and repository exchange.

Where does all this leave the counter-terrorism strategy? To blunt the opposition’s criticism of running a soft state, Congress spokesman and chairman of the administrative reforms committee Veerappa Moily quickly pulled out a heavily-censored eighth report on combating terror. The report, which has been with the prime minister for nearly two months, advocated a new terror law and the setting up of a federal agency. Did it also have anything to say on government accountability? In response, all Moily had to offer was Page 106 of the report, blanked out for "security considerations". According to him, bits about accountability for deaths in terrorist attacks "had to be kept secret since it would embolden terrorists"! Never mind if statistics show that nearly 10,000 citizens, including security personnel, have died in various incidents of terrorist and insurgency-related violence between 2003 and 2007.

Government declarations such as those after the Delhi blasts are certainly of no consolation to people like Pappu Pawar who lost eight of his family members to the blast in Gali no. 42 in Beadonpura. He struggles with words as he recalls the day: "It is impossible for me to explain what actually happened at that moment.... Amidst the huge crowd, I could see bodies. It was simply shocking." Shock is something 28-year-old Usha is also recovering from. Eight months pregnant and a mother of two, she lost her father-in-law, got injured herself but is grateful that her son is alive.

Meanwhile, the unknown terrorist continues to lurk out there. The Delhi police, in what is another routine exercise, released sketches of the Delhi bombers based on eyewitness accounts. The face of Abdus Subhan ‘Tauqeer’ too finds prominent display in the media. But ask investigators about arrests and, indeed, the rate of convictions in such cases. That is simply another story.

By Saikat Datta, Smruti Koppikar and Chandrani Banerjee