Lack of investigative skills and intelligence mean mounting list of urban terror cases are unsolved

Even as the National Investigation Agency begins to piece together witness accounts and forensic evidence in the wake of Wednesday's terrorist attack at the capital's High Court, officers are privately admitting the thing they need to secure a rapid breakthrough is a miracle.

In spite of massive investments in police infrastructure, deficiencies in investigative skills, careless preventive policing and a crippling lack of intelligence has meant not one urban terrorist attack since the November 2008 Lashkar-e-Taiba assault on Mumbai has been solved.

New Delhi authorities, like their counterparts in other cities, demonstrated a blithe disregard of the threat. No closed-circuit television cameras were installed outside the court complex even after a car-bomb went off outside the High Court in May, failing to kill only because of errors in its fabrication. Faced with protests from lawyers and litigants, sources said, the police also failed to enforce parking regulations in front of the court — adding to its vulnerability.

Not surprisingly, the roll of unsolved cases is mounting: there have been no credible arrests in last month's serial bombings in Mumbai; the failed attack on the High Court; the December 2010 bombing at the Shitla Ghat in Varanasi; the drive-by shooting at Delhi's iconic Jama Masjid in September 2010; the April 2010 serial bombings at the Chinnaswamy stadium in Bangalore; and the February 2010 bombing of the German Bakery in Pune.

Bar the 2010 bombing in Pune, which used military-grade RDX, the remaining attacks suggest a common authorship: the bombs have been fabricated from the easily available fertilizer ammonium nitrate, which has been used to lethal effect by terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan.

India's intelligence services suspect the attacks have been carried out by the Indian Mujahideen, a jihadist network responsible for a string of attacks the perpetrators said was carried out in retaliation against the anti-Muslim violence that tore apart Gujarat in 2002. Hard evidence, though, is absent.

Police so far have few leads in New Delhi, other than the e-mail sent to television studios claiming responsibility for the attack on behalf of an organisation calling itself the Harkat-ul-Jihadi, saying it had carried out the attack to demand the release of Parliament House attack-accused death-row convict, Muhammad Afzal Guru.

The name Harkat-ul-Jihadi is used, with minor variations, by two distinct organisations — one in Bangladesh, and the other in Pakistan. Both have carried out attacks in India, but neither has e-mailed such claims in the past, relying instead on mainstream media and Islamist publications. Intelligence sources said the badly written text, sent from harkatuljihadi2011@gmail.com, a recently created account, was being investigated, but was more likely than not a fabrication.

Missing suspects

In an internal 2010 dossier obtained by The Hindu, the Union Home Ministry recorded that 31 members of the Indian Mujahideen and its south India affiliate, the Jamait-ul-Ansar Mujahideen, were still at large. The fugitives included the key commanders of an Indian Mujahideen urban bombing campaign which claimed 2005 to 2008, as well as several mid-rung operatives who facilitated the attacks.

Bar Atif Amin, an Uttar Pradesh resident killed in a shootout with police in New Delhi three years ago, none of the top commanders of the Indian Mujahideen have been located.

Police believe at least three of those leaders — Mumbai resident Altaf Subhan Qureshi, as well as former Karnataka residents Riyaz Ismail Shahbandri and his brother Iqbal Shahbandri — are now hiding out in Pakistan.

Evidence provided by David Headley, who carried out the reconnaissance operation that preceded the 26/11 attack in Mumbai, suggests the men run one of two jihadist cells collectively known as the “Karachi Project”— an operation run by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, which uses Indian nationals to conduct operations against the country.

Several of eight Uttar Pradesh residents named in the Home Ministry dossier — notably Mirza Shadab Beigh, ‘Bada' Muhammad Sajid, Ariz Khan and Muhammad Saqib — are alleged to have helped plant explosive devices in New Delhi in 2008.

Shahnawaz Alam, who investigators allege, was involved in bombings in New Delhi in 2005 as well as the attacks on Mumbai's train system in 2006, also figures in the dossier. Police had charged suspects unconnected with the Indian Mujahideen for these attacks, but subsequent evidence suggests innocent people might have been implicated by the authorities.

The dossier also points to the Indian Mujahideen network's nationwide reach: six Kerala residents, along with three from Maharashtra and two each from Kerala and Karnataka, are listed as fugitives.