Police handling of terror still shoddy

A crudely designed low-intensity bomb blast in the Bhopal-Ujjain Passenger on Tuesday morning, in which nine persons were injured, and the subsequent killing of a terrorist holed up in a Lucknow suburb well after midnight by the anti-terrorism squad, have been highlighted in the media, on the basis of police briefings, as part of a conjoined terrorist operation that points to an Islamic State connection. While investigations will tell us where these two separate incidents come together, if at all, it is surprising the police created so much off-the-cuff drama with a reference to the dreaded ISIS, the international terror outfit that has outdone Al Qaeda in brutality. No proof has, however, been offered.

This is hardly surprising. The police, across the country, is known to pack the chargesheet of an arrested person with offences from practically every IPC section in the hope that some will stick. But mostly it doesn’t as the police work is bad — partly out of sloppiness, but also due to lack of training and proper forensic equipment. Courts have thrown out the prosecution’s contention in so many cases involving terrorism that the phenomenon has become an embarrassment and made the police an object of ridicule, which is unfortunate.

Police officers rush to sections of the media hungry for excitement, but are unable to back up their claims in court. This has happened even in some high-profile cases, such as in Hyderabad. The downside of this is that in the minority communities — Muslims and Sikhs (such as in Punjab) — the police is seen as biased, and this is a bad advertisement for anti-terror operations in a country where fighting terrorism should be serious business. Terrorism quite appropriately tops the chart of India’s security priorities, and we do need to be vigilant of new mutations of the virus such as ISIS.

The bright spot in Tuesday’s developments was the apprehending of half a dozen suspects in the train blast case, based on concealed camera footage in Madhya Pradesh, the advance tracking by the UP police of some terrorism suspects at various places in the state, and the coordination between MP and UP. The outlines of an extremist organisation, of even a rudimentary kind, that was prepared to use violence, is discernible.

The way the Lucknow incident was dealt with by the authorities leaves much to be desired, however. A senior police officer was all over television making statements that have been proved to be false. This official is clearly in need of retraining in dealing with terrorism. The entire operation was carried on with hundreds of onlookers mingling happily with the uniformed personnel, many standing on duty with hands in their pockets. Greater professionalism appears to be urgently needed.