Editorial

Delhi was shocked again, within less than four months after a blast at the High Court premises. On September 7 morning a powerful bombing at the same place killed 14 and maimed over 90 people. Which again exposed the appalling vulnerability of one of the most secured places in the country. Hardly two months ago Mumbai was attacked in a serial blast. No headway has been made so far in any of the probe.

The union government has miserably failed to protect the lives and property of the common citizens of India. Terrorists strike with monstrous precision, killing and injuring  innocent men, women and children in the heart of the city, supposedly high security zones. “Capital was already on high alert for Parliament session”, says an inexplicably insensitive Home Minister P Chidambaram. His Prime Minister Manmohan Singh added, we already have some leads, but will take some time to reach the real culprits.

In the last seven years under the UPA, India has faced intermittent terror attacks. Earlier also the country has faced a number of attacks. But the difference is in all earlier attacks the culprits were caught, their conspiracy unearthed and in most cases the perpetrators were punished. So the fear of the state was there and the terror attacks were not this frequent. There was a resolve to fight, and a hope to win the war against terror.

Under the UPA, not a single case has been solved, no arrests made and in most cases the culprits will go scot-free. It has shamelessly been mouthing the same vacuous platitudes after systematically and deliberately weakening every apparatus, instrument and law that fought terror and divisive elements. First, it declared that it was soft, if not sympathetic, on terror. Then it scrapped strong anti-terror laws like POTA and TADA. Its leaders assiduously tried to assuage the sentiments of the jehadis by trying to disprove the general belief that all Muslims are not terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims. To advance this pernicious approach  it even absolved Pakistan of masterminding jehadi terror and started sharing alleged data of Hindu terror with the enemy country. For this they even rewrote their own investigative agencies’ charge sheets and case diaries and fabricated fictitious theories of Muslim victimhood. And to what result?

So far, all the bomb blast cases under the UPA are languishing. Innocent, peace loving, patriotic Hindus are suffering in jail without any charge proved against them.

But what about the real criminals? Be it the German Bakery blast, Pune, Mehrauli blast, Delhi, Chinnaswamy Stadium blast, Bangalore, Jama Masjid firing and blast, Delhi, Sheetla Ghat blast, Varanasi, Delhi High Court blast (May 25, 2011), Mumbai serial blasts—all between 2010 to 2011—investigations seem to have reached a dead end. Except for one arrest in the Pune blast, in all the other cases not a single person has been arrested, or charge sheet filed. Can there be a more telling instance of smug indifference and casual disdain? The Prime Minister is sadly clueless, his Home Minister arrogantly brazen.

The Congress has no will to fight terror. It has failed on all fronts. But in its exhibit ineptitude on terror it sees political profit. It has much to gain. And it makes no effort to hide this fact. It has also refused to learn from the success of the US, UK and Israel in securing the nation against terror. And Indians are being wantonly slaughtered.  

As usual all vvips made a ritualistic beeline to the hospitals and blast site and mouthed appropriate homilies, which the nation has got used to and tired of listening to again and again. Do they have any idea of the depth of national angst? The volume of revulsion for the insincere political class has reached the brim. Rahul Gandhi and Ghulam Nabi Azad had a taste of the public ire when they went on their disaster tourism pastime. The public scowled and hooted them.

The general feeling is that the politicians and bureaucrats are being heavily protected at the tax payers’ expense while the citizens are left to fend for themselves. If only all the security for politicians are withdrawn, they will start feeling the heat and the need to act decisively against the terrorists. And they will stop playing politics with the lives of ordinary citizens.