MUMBAI - Like a deadly unwanted relative
refusing to sever connections, terrorism revisited
Mumbai after nearly three years, with three bomb
blasts on the evening of July 13. Twenty-one
people have died in the explosions and over 140
injured. The death toll is rising.
The
bombs exploded at around 6.45 pm: outside a school
bus stop in suburban Dadar, the busy jewelry
market zone of Zaveri Bazar and the diamond
trading district at the Opera House area in south
Mumbai. The timing and location of the explosives
showed intent to target heavily crowded areas
during rush hour.
Mumbai police
commissioner Arup Patnaik told media personnel at
the blast sites that the bombs at Zaveri Bazaar
and Opera
House seemed to have been
high-intensity improvised explosive devices
(IEDs), judging by the damage in the two areas.
The Dadar bus stop bomb was of relatively lower
intensity. The bombs exploded within 10 minutes of
each other, Patnaik confirmed.
No
terrorist group has yet claimed responsibility for
the blasts, and no suspects have been officially
named. From the familiar pattern of the attacks,
security agencies unofficially mentioned the
involvement of the so-called Indian Mujahideen.
But this group of killers, said to be supported
by, or a front for, the Pakistani terrorist outfit
Lakshar-e-Taiba, has not sent its trademark e-mail
to media outlets claiming credit for this latest
exhibition of terror.
All the same, there
can be little doubt that in the public's mind -
and among officials - the attack carries the
hallmark of Pakistani involvement; Indian
officials have repeatedly accused Pakistan's
Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency of helping
coordinate and fund previous attacks.
Home
Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram was quoted on
Thursday as saying, "All groups hostile to India
are under radar. We are not ruling out anything.
We're looking at everyone and we will find out who
is behind these attacks."
He added,
"Whoever perpetrated these attacks has worked in a
very, very clandestine manner. It's not a failure
of intelligence."
The people of Mumbai
might disagree.
The second of the three
bombs exploded at a bus stop adjacent to walls of
the St Antonio High School in Dadar, suburban
Mumbai. During the day, the reconnoitering killers
and bomb-planters would have seen and heard
children playing on the slide and swings of the
school playground that shares the same boundary
wall with the bus stop.
"The school closes
at 6.00 pm and fortunately the school children had
left before the bomb exploded," said shocked Dadar
resident Dinesh Chedde.
Kunal Shinde, a
reporter with the Press Trust of India news
agency, arrived at the blast site within 30
minutes of the explosion. "There was chaos,"
Shinde told Asia Times Online, "Bystanders carried
away one person dead, and a lady had her hand
blown off."
The Dadar blast was relatively
less lethal, with the metal roof of the bus stop
slightly mangled but intact; shop windows opposite
had their panes shattered but the shop signs above
survived. From across the road, balconies of
residential buildings were crowded with unharmed
householders interestedly viewing proceedings
below.
The Zaveri Bazaar and Opera House
bombs caused more fatal havoc. Eye-witnesses
reported seeing severed limbs, diamonds and
bloodied glass shards littering the bombed narrow
lane with small eateries patronized by diamond
traders. Most of the fatalities came from this
bomb.
A rainy monsoon evening in Mumbai
had delivered the latest reminder of the
vulnerability of India's financial capital to
serial terrorist attacks, the 15th since 1993. The
attacks signal the end to a phase of peace since
November 2008, when 10 coordinated shooting and
bombing attacks across the city by militants led
to the killing of 164 and wounding of at least
308.
"Not again," was the thought that
popped instantly into mind as television channels
flashed news about the bomb blasts at 7.00 pm. But
history repeats itself, as they say, when lessons
are not learned from history. And yet again senior
Mumbai police officials were found wanting not
just in preventing another terrorist attack, but
in immediate responsibilities - such as credible
information outflow.
No police
spokesperson used the media to calm public nerves
in the crucial first hour after the attacks, when
rumors fly and rage and panic can cause more
damage. After nearly two decades of regular
terrorist attacks, the Mumbai police force does
not even have an official spokesperson, or a
crisis control room that quickly kick-starts in
such instances - failings one would have expected
to have been corrected at least after 2008.
Three years ago, Pakistani-trained
mercenaries went on a rampage that lasted 60 hours
before they were gunned down by security forces,
except for one captured survivor, Ajmal Kasab,
from Faridkot village in Pakistan.
Kasab
is now awaiting his convicted death sentence in
Arthur Road Jail in central Mumbai. Some reports
initially mentioned that Wednesday was Kasab's
birthday, hinting that his pals could have set off
the fatal bangs as a diabolic celebration, but
court documents purportedly state Kasab was born
on September 13, 1987.
Relative normalcy
returned to Mumbai within hours of the blasts of
July 13. At around 10.00 pm at the busy Dadar
station, a key suburban commuting hub in central
Mumbai, the flower ladies were smiling and selling
garlands of jasmine and marigold within earshot of
where the bomb had detonated. Dadar is one of
older residential areas in Mumbai and has one of
the biggest vegetable markets in the city.
About 200 meters west from Dadar station,
at the blast site outside St Antonia School, a
quiet crowd of over 200 onlookers mingled with
police vehicles, rain-coated officials, a dozen
television broadcasting sedans and a municipality
crane trying to fix additional lighting to focus
on the bomb spot in the dimly lit, tree-lined
avenue.
The monsoon rains had paused, and
long television cables slithered on the watery
road like black snakes carrying images of
tired-looking TV reporters trying to make sense of
it all.
The three Mumbai blasts were the
first major terrorist attack in India since 17
people were killed in the February 2010 bombing of
the German Bakery cafeteria in Pune city, 150
kilometers from Mumbai. German Bakery, the name of
separately owned pastry shops in some Indian towns
popular with Westerners, sell the likes of
brownies and brown bread and are tempting targets
for both tourists and terrorists.
The July
13 blasts are the latest of recent indicators that
the merchants of murder are crawling out of their
holes after the intense spotlight on terrorist
groups since the November 2008 attacks.
In
May, a car bomb was found outside the New Delhi
High Court, but lives were saved after apparently
the electronic circuits in the explosive device
malfunctioned in the severe summer of Delhi where
temperatures can cross 45 degrees Celsius.
American security agencies warned India earlier
this month of an impending terrorist attack with
suicide bombers.
Within hours of the
latest hit, the Pakistan Foreign Ministry issued a
statement that Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari
and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani had both
condemned the attacks, and expressed distress at
the loss of life and injuries.
But there
seems little doubt the three blasts have damaged
if not blown up a stuttering peace process between
India and Pakistan since the 2008 attacks. The
foreign ministers of the two countries are
scheduled to meet in New Delhi on July 27. If this
happens, quite likely there will be a different
agenda on the table - such as what Pakistan plans
to do with Kasab's trainers and terrorist sponsors
in Pakistan.
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