Pink Panther strikes

If there is any chance that terrorism will ultimately be defeated in India, we can safely rule out effective policing and good intelligence as being the reasons for it. Exhibit A is the incompetence with which the Headley-Rana investigations are being handled. It has all the hallmarks of Inspector Jacques Clouseau of Pink Panther fame. A bumbling, fictional French detective, Clouseau survives through sheer luck and incompetence even while his enemies trip.

This has been our story, too. The latest one began with a case being registered by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation in Chicago against David Coleman Headley (aka Daood Gilani) and Tahawwur Hussain Rana, who were apparently plotting incendiary stuff in India. A few strategic leaks later, India’ s panthers are all over the place, looking under dungheaps and turning over anthills in the hope that something will turn up.

It has. Barely a few days after the starter’s gun went off, we have discovered that Headley has been on a Bharat Darshan, scouting for things to blow up, cosying up to the Bhatts of the world. His excursions took him from five-star gyms to five-star hotels to five-star Osho communes. In short, he operated right under our noses and our Clouseaus had no clue.

Now, of course, we seem to know everything about him: who he met, what he intended to do. All previously unsolvable crimes are soon likely to be reported solved. After sending dossier after dossier to Pakistan and grumbling about what they did, or didn’t do, to Hafiz Saeed, the Lashkar-e-Taiba’s mentor, we have now happily discovered that Headley and Rana contributed their mite to 26/11. It’s a small world.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA), barely a few months old, seems to have learned all the tricks of the trade. The game is to be seen to do something rather than really delve, probe and find out. Over the last few days, our intelligence agencies have been leaking like sieves, generating scoop after scoop for journos, when it should have been obvious to anybody that such leaks, if genuine, can compromise investigations.

No professional sleuthing agency goes around bandying all its conspiracy theories even before its probe is completed, but this is precisely what we have been witnessing. Little wonder, the FBI did not share much with the Indian officials who turned up in the US to seek access to Headley and Rana. The reports are that they were politely told no, but home minister P Chidambaram put a brave face on it by claiming that they didn’t go there for this purpose.

The embarrassment is one thing, but didn’t the officials think about using the telephone? A routine call to their FBI counterparts would have told them that there was no need to pack their bags for the US when they were not to be given access to the terror duo. If this is the kind of spadework they do before rushing off here and there to investigate, god help us.

There is only one reason for our failure to get anywhere with our terror investigations: we are taking short-cuts all the time. Whenever there is public pressure to deliver results, our politicians expect out sleuths to come up with answers instantly — and they do. The answers are usually dubious, if not downright misleading, but our cops have learnt the hard way that shoddy work will be forgiven as public memory is short. But there is a heavy price to be paid for making politicians appear like they can’t deliver.

The police deliver what the politicians want. If there is a public outcry against a terror act, they will generate arrests and float conspiracy theories. If the heat gets worse, they sometimes deliver dead bodies in encounters. What we don’t ever seem to get is a professional investigation, with all the loose ends tied and resulting in convictions. One is hard put to find any success after the 1993 blasts which ended in lots of convictions almost 15 years after the event. We might also manage to convict Kasab, thanks to the individual heroism of a lathi-wielding Omble and the good fortune we had in capturing Kasab’s antics on camera.

Which brings us back to the Pink Panther analogy. The role that luck plays in our police and criminal investigation system is simply too large — as the Kasab capture personifies. Given the pathetic security we provide our citizens — whether at the Taj or CST — the only thing to be said is that India is too big a country to frighten for longish periods of time. We are simply too many people having too many diverse identities to be collectively terrorised by anyone. 9/11 changed America, 26/11 did nothing to us.

For a few days, 26/11 brought out the candlelight-wallahs, but Mumbai is about future dreams, not last week’s nightmares. Apathy is a kind of dubious strength for us. Terror is failing in spite of the best efforts of our Pink Panther investigative agencies.