An unsatisfactory response

The latest terrorist outrage is in the mopping-up stage but like the Dinanagar attack, it leaves behind unanswered questions. The red flag should have gone up when Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s plane began the unscheduled descent to Lahore on December 25. Punjab should have been doubly on the guard because it had endured a terror attack just six months ago. The entire narrative has many unexplained gaps, right from the time a SP from a sensitive border district was allegedly kidnapped to the deployment of urban counter-terrorism specialists, the National Security Guards (NSG), in a very different setting. At last count, at least half a dozen security agencies were engaged in eliminating the terrorists.

The Centre is currently probing the role of the SP and porosity of the border, if the terrorists had indeed crossed over. The imperatives of real-politics will make it impossible for the government to publicly launder the culpability of men from the local police or the BSF. This is because it would knock the bottom out of India’s contention, especially by people leading the government at the Centre, that all incidents such as these have been perpetrated by forces from across the border with the active connivance of one of the wings of the Pakistan Government.  

Be that it may, India can certainly improve the reflexes of its security forces who have been found wanting in situations that are not of the set-piece kind. For a start, it must pay attention to the Punjab Police whose unpreparedness was glaringly visible on TV channels. Next, it has to improve the leadership quality of the BSF and also of the other paramilitary forces. From Mumbai to Pathankot, the common thread has been the inability of the country’s minders of the borders to check ingress of anti-India elements out to commit violence. True, no country can completely check migration out of economic distress. But the integrity and capability of a country’s security forces is judged by its ability to protect citizens from intruders. On that count, despite promising to make a difference, the Modi dispensation also seems to have feet of clay.