Local terror modules are difficult to track

NEW DELHI: Following back-to-back serial blasts on two consecutive days in Bangalore and Ahmedabad, Intelligence sources are admitting that they are helplesss, as highly localised modules strike at will. Sources said initial inputs from Ahmedabad show several similarities with the blasts in Bangalore - locally acquired explosives with localised modules planting the bombs.

On Saturday many sources in the security establishment admitted to an almost complete inability to prevent the kind of local terrorist operation that Bangalore saw on Friday. By Saturday evening, the blasts in Ahmedabad further buttressed their helplessness. “I won’t be surprised if more blasts happen in the next few days,” said a senior official.

Significantly, some analysts in the establishment are beginning to question the outright blaming of SIMI factions for carrying out terrorist attacks. The timing of the bombings in Bangalore and Ahmedabad, after the Manmohan Singh government won a majority, and the fact that both blasts have taken place in BJP-ruled states are raising curiosity among these analysts within the security establishment.

 Meanwhile, security at all vital installations, major religious places and cities and town is being stepped up because of the coming Independence Day celebrations on Aug 15.  “Until a few years ago we had a clear pattern of security threat around the Independence and Republic Days. Kashmir militants trying to create havoc in J&K and elsewhere, insurgent groups in northeast creating trouble there, and the naxals in central India,” said a senior police officer. “But that has now undergone significant changes, and the scenario is much more complex,” he said.

Currently there “are so many groups with their own grievances — Babri Masjid to Gujarat riots. And they are no more dependent on foreign supplies of explosives or money,” the source said.