Bharat Rakshak

hnair wrote:So "no blaming" orders still in force? NIA is looking more and more like a political IED handling device than an investigative arm

...
Eyewitnesses said nearly 150 persons were in queue on four counters for getting passes issued to get inside the court premises. As it was the PIL day on Wednesday, the turnout of litigants’ was even higher in the high court. The May 25 blast also took place on PIL day – Wednesday. According to witnesses, the blast was so powerful that limbs of several were dismembered that were soon cleared by the police personnel. The tremors could also be heard at Patiala House and India Gate. Survivors and eye-witnesses appeared traumatized even as Delhi Police personnel cordoned off the area and collected samples from the spot. The belongings of the victims – mostly litigants – were strewn all around and the files and documents could be seen perched on nearby trees, some 15-feet high in the air.

Initial probe findings point to the use of pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN), a deadly explosive, which experts said would have exploded even in event of heavy rains. NSG National Bomb Data Centre has collected samples and is examining them to ascertain the exact material used.

However, sources said PETN is used for defence purposes and in controlled laboratories, hinting at involvement of a foreign hand. An investigating officer on the spot said the blast produced a yellowish white smoke that enveloped the atmosphere. “The bomb was placed in a blackish grey briefcase. The perpetrator abandoned the bag and left. Shrapnel, glass pieces and splinters were found. No unexploded bomb was recovered,” said the official.

Top brass of Delhi Police, were, however, tight-lipped on details, saying different agencies were investigating and it would be too early to arrive at any conclusion. “A blast took place near gate 5 of Delhi High Court. Apparently, the explosive was kept inside a briefcase. Teams of CFSL and NSG are trying to establish the exact nature of the explosive. It is too early to ascertain the exact nature of the blast and the materials used,” said Dharmendra Kumar, Special Commissioner of Police (Law and Order).

....

If you go beyond the seizure of Kasab, then you stumble into the first of the multiple failures of Chidambaram's home ministry. That is the failure to get Pakistan moving against the 26/11 accused. You could fault the government as a whole for this and specially Manmohan Singh's ill-conceived peace initiatives. But the driving force to secure convictions ought to have been the home ministry, and it was found wanting. It was found remiss likewise in the David Coleman Headley and Tahawwur Rana cases, with Wikileaks revealing India was never serious about Headley's extradition. A politician and a sincere man in Chidambaram's place would have handled things differently, and made it a mission to get justice for 26/11.

But India lost the 26/11 case with Pakistan, and Chidambaram's home ministry has been clueless about the Pune attack that followed soon after, tailed by terrorism in Delhi, Varanasi, Bombay again (13/7), and once more Delhi today. There will be stout rebuttal from Chidambaram that it is not intelligence failure, dubious attempts will be made to show the NDA years as being worse for terrorism, homilies about secularism will be preached, the resilience of Delhi would be praised, and it would be back to zero.

Well, it's time to call a spade a spade. Chidambaram has outlived his utility as home minister. If Anna Hazare's team is to be believed, he has unleashed the intelligence hounds against the anti-corruption movement, which means politicization of the IB is peaking again. IB officers are deeply unhappy about this. To save his political skin, Chidambaram will further politicize his charge, and leave India vulnerable to terrorists. This government and its prime mover, Sonia Gandhi, are famously risk-averse, and the reflex would be to retain Chidambaram at home. That would be a blunder.

The UPA is losing the battle with Anna Hazare. Keeping P.Chidambaram in home would open the government and the Congress party to new charges that it is not serious about combating terrorism. It would make the UPA very unelectable. Chidambaram has to go.

IndraD wrote:The bombers are coming from crowd and disappearing back in crowd.

They are not using hi-fi RDX type explosives any more.

Every thing is local-local module, local people, local training

What is needed is penetration inside IM/SIMI/terror modules

The much needed intelligence can only come in the form of foot-intelligence

As long as terror doesn't become a poll issue we are destined to die like pigs in bomb blast

I request you all to watch this clip

"The U.S. and India probably have better coordination than between Delhi and the states," said R. Hariharan, an analyst and former Indian intelligence official. "There are 12 to 14 agencies involved in investigating, and each has their own fiefdom. With America's Homeland Security, despite its draconian powers, at least everyone's at the same table."

"There's an unfortunate laxity that rolls out through the entire culture," Said Bhaskar Roy, a Delhi-based security analyst with the South Asia Analysis Group think tank. "It's, 'Do it tomorrow. Do it the next day.' There's a real need to tighten up."

IndraD wrote:http://www.hindustantimes.com/New-terro ... 42956.aspx
New terror group behind blast
....

Although the Prime Minister said it was “too early” to identify the group behind Wednesday’s blast, there are clear indications that an indigenous group with no linkages to the known remnants of the Indian Mujahideen was responsible. Experts said no recent activity from the IM veterans indicated that an all-new formation, with no connection with the old boys, has been targeting the country.

But the sources said the only alert the Delhi Police got on July 29 was about a possible attack by Sikh militants in case of death row convict and Khalistan Liberation Front leader Devinder Singh Bhullar being hanged.

Sources said preliminary information indicated that the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI) e-mail claiming responsibility was sent through a Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited internet protocol address after bouncing off proxy servers based in South Africa. Since BSNL’s National Operating Centre in Bangalore was yet to come out with specific information till late Wednesday, it was not clear whether HuJI had anything to do with the blast.

The National Investigation Agency and others, however, have found that the composition of the bomb in the Delhi high court was similar to the unexploded device found outside the same court on May 25 — both had nails and similar chemical compositions.

They said the group had been able to perfect the device after it failed on May 25 as two detonators caught fire. There was no timer or detonator found in the explosions in Varanasi’s Sheetla Ghat in December last, the July 13 blasts in Mumbai and at the Delhi high court on Wednesday.

A lethal cocktail of chemical pentaerythritol trinitrate or PETN used for heart ailments to smoothen blood flow and nitrate-based explosives was used by terrorists today to carry out the blast at Delhi High Court premises.

The chemical which was discovered by German forces in World War-I has become a favourite terror toy in the hands of organisations like Lashker-e-Taiba, Hizbul Mujahideen and Al-Qaeda which have used it globally to cause mayhem.

PETN, which has become popular over the years because it does not get easily detected, is not used in isolation but is laced with more volatile explosives like Ammonium Nitrate or Potassium Nitrate to increase the intensity of the blast.

The chemical normally used as vasodilator in the medical field gained notoriety in India between 2003-05 when militants in Jammu and Kashmir used it in many of their attacks with most deadly being a car bombing in Pattan, North Kashmir in 2003.

In last year's blast in Varanasi the use of PETN was suspected by investigative agencies.

Pranay wrote:http://www.ndtv.com/video/special/watch ... -blast-548

Strong words by Narendra Modi, etc on the Delhi Blast...

Terrorism has filled the land of Hindustan with blood of innocents. In Delhi, this is the second consecutive attack on the High Court. We were lucky the first time. But this time, we have gotten to know how dangerous the intentions (of the terrorists) are. To the families of those who lost their lives and those who were injured, I express my sorrow.

Whenever there are incidents of terror, there is a lot of temporary expression of anger. But unfortunately, things like: how to fight and finish terrorism? How to stop the killing of innocent civilians? In these issues, we need to learn from foreign countries which didn’t let terrorist incidents repeat after the first time.

What is the reason that there are constantly terror attacks on India? What is the reason that the blood of innocents is shed so many times in India? The fight against terrorism is not about Rajneeti (politics); it is about Rashtraneeti (Values of the Rashtra). If our Values are clear (without confusion), and our intentions pure; and if we are willful, we can uproot terrorism from Hindustan and be free from its presence.

Now, let us join hands, rise above temporary political selfishness, uphold the principles of human rights, and will ourselves to march forward. The Nation expects the leadership of Hindustan to take debilitating action (against those responsible), the Nation is tired of empty dialogs and speeches, and therefore it is time for the Leadership take crippling action and restore the trust and faith of the citizens.

...
The terrorists also mixed a plastic explosive called PETN with ammonium nitrate in Wednesday’s bomb.

“This is a plastic explosive that is commercially available and can be used even during rains. This ensured that the bomb would go off even if it rained heavily today,” the investigator said.

Almost two kilograms of explosive was mixed with ammonium nitrate along with a mobile phone that was used to time and detonate the device.

“Earlier they would use quartz clocks that could be detected and used during an investigation. But the digital timer of a mobile phone is much more difficult to detect and when the alarm in the phone rings, it sends out an electric impulse that detonates the bomb.”
....

NEW DELHI: This was no dud bomb that failed to explode just three months back, metres away from the same spot. On Wednesday, the bomb that triggered mayhem at the reception area of the Delhi high court had all the ingredients to inflict maximum damage. And the blast footprints suggest it was designed by an expert bomb-maker, say forensic officials.

Initial investigations show the terrorists had planted the explosive inside a small black briefcase that was tucked away under the counter at the reception centre. Sleuths claimed it was a nitrate-based explosive laced with pentaerythritol trinitrate (PETN), another deadly explosive. The Improvised Explosive Device was attached with a timer to give the terrorist enough time to leave after planting the bomb.

Police, however, are yet to recover the timer, but a wire has been found apart from sharpnels. Secretary (Internal Security) U K Bansal claimed that traces of PETN were recovered from the blast site. Sources say the bomb could have weighed between 3-4 kg, considering the impact of the blast. Special Cell officers claimed 'there is a possibility that RDX may have been used, though the home ministry ruled out its use.

A senior police officer said, "It was a very high intensity bomb. There was a deliberate attempt to cause maximum casualties. The impact was borne by the cemented area near the reception where a crater was formed. In fact, the bomb ripped apart concrete slabs that hit a couple of victims, who died instantly". A four-foot-deep crater was formed at the explosion site with blood-splattered limbs and human flesh scattered everywhere.

Blasts carried out by the Indian Mujahideen in the past few years were triggered by bombs packed with ammonium nitrate, sharpnels and ball bearings. But this time, PETN was used. It's a deadly explosive used by terrorists across the globe.

PETN was used by the dirty shoe-bomber in 2001, during the Christmas bombing plot in the Philippines in 2009, and in the 2010 cargo plane bomb plot in London and Dubai.

A forensic team from CFSL, Delhi and National Security Guards have collected forensic evidence from the spot, which is being examined for clues and a formal report would be handed over to police and NIA by Thursday.

cbelwal wrote:The victims of all these terrorist actions that rip through India at constant intervals remain unknown till one hits home. Just found out a very close family relative was in the line at the High Court and one of the 11 victims. Leaves behind a wife, son and daughter. Very sad indeed !!

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.

{PC should take credit for this great acheivement.}

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 [email protected], 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.

Buckets of ink, not least in the Indian media, will be spilled in coming days about today’s bombing: Is India sufficiently prepared? What’s the state of Indian intelligence and coordination, especially in the wake of reforms introduced by Home Minister P. Chidambaram after the November 26, 2008 Mumbai attacks? Who was responsible for today’s bombing, and how should India pursue justice?

Today, however, I think it’s worth simply standing with the people of India.

abhishek_sharma wrote:Sophisticated IEDs used to trigger Mumbai blasts: Govt

Hours after Chidamabaram's statement, union home secretary RK Singh briefing media persons in Delhi, said that the IEDs used for blasts in Mumbai were not crude and showed a certain degree of sophistication.

The home secretary also gave details of the places were the bombs were kept by the terrorists.

The bomb at Opera House was hidden under garbage while at Dadar, it was placed over a bus shelter, he said. At Zaveri Bazar, the bomb was concealed under an umbrella near a motorcycle, he added.

Earlier addressing a press conference in Mumbai, Chidamabram had said the explosion at Dadar was of low intensity but the other two at Opera House, Zaveri Bazar were of high intensity.

He also revealed that the blasts were not remote-triggered.

...

He refused to accept any intelligence failure and said that there was no specific or credible input about the Wednesday terror strikes.

ramana wrote:Red Fort, Lok Sabha, Delhi High Court. All symbols of state.

Next they will attack Army Hqs. Hope the guards are on duty and take necessary actions.

abhijitm wrote:The problem is MMS, PC etc are managers, not leaders. The entire gang is a bunch of bureaucrats and lawyers. Terrorism, nasty neighbors, global power games, domestic issues cannot be 'managed'. To see the nation through these games and emerge as a winner we need a leader. Anna Hazare episode clearly demonstrated that indians are yearning for a leader. Unfortunately there is no leader in the horizon who can guide us through. So I guess we have to survive somehow till we find one.

cbelwal wrote:The victims of all these terrorist actions that rip through India at constant intervals remain unknown till one hits home. Just found out a very close family relative was in the line at the High Court and one of the 11 victims. Leaves behind a wife, son and daughter. Very sad indeed !!

cbelwal wrote:The victims of all these terrorist actions that rip through India at constant intervals remain unknown till one hits home. Just found out a very close family relative was in the line at the High Court and one of the 11 victims. Leaves behind a wife, son and daughter. Very sad indeed !!

Prem wrote:To fight a real war against Atanakwad then clean Azamgarh from undesired elements. As long as Azamgarh remain under the protection of Congress india will continue to suffer from terrorism .This area plays big part in the schemes of D company, LET/JUD, ISI and TJ.

Although the Prime Minister said it was “too early” to identify the group behind Wednesday’s blast, there are clear indications that an indigenous group with no linkages to the known remnants of the Indian Mujahideen was responsible. Experts said no recent activity from the IM veterans indicated that an all-new formation, with no connection with the old boys, has been targeting the country.

But the sources said the only alert the Delhi Police got on July 29 was about a possible attack by Sikh militants in case of death row convict and Khalistan Liberation Front leader Devinder Singh Bhullar being hanged.

Sources said preliminary information indicated that the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI) e-mail claiming responsibility was sent through a Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited internet protocol address after bouncing off proxy servers based in South Africa. Since BSNL’s National Operating Centre in Bangalore was yet to come out with specific information till late Wednesday, it was not clear whether HuJI had anything to do with the blast.

The National Investigation Agency and others, however, have found that the composition of the bomb in the Delhi high court was similar to the unexploded device found outside the same court on May 25 — both had nails and similar chemical compositions.

They said the group had been able to perfect the device after it failed on May 25 as two detonators caught fire. There was no timer or detonator found in the explosions in Varanasi’s Sheetla Ghat in December last, the July 13 blasts in Mumbai and at the Delhi high court on Wednesday.

Cosmo_R wrote:@ManuT^^

IIUC, there was no intelligence in July about the Mumbai blasts. Chidumb et al are talking about intelligence in July about Delhi

The terror attack on the Delhi high court on Wednesday was not only designed to gain publicity but also deliver a brutal message to high court judges and lawyers, sources said. The plan was not only to target ordinary people but also take a chance at a high court judge passing through the spot.

Wednesday’s attack after the failed attempt at the high court on May 25 was apparently made to intimidate the court, which is hearing terror cases and to give a deadly retort to the rejection of appeals of those charged of terror activities after the Batla House encounter three years ago.

Counter-terror specialists pointed out that while all appeals related to the September 19, 2008 encounter at Batla House were rejected by the high court in 2009, two terror trials involving two Pakistanis are currently pending in the court. Courts in other states have been targeted for similar reasons. Courts in Uttar Pradesh’s Lucknow, Varanasi and Faizabad were the first in the series of terror attacks on courts.

In November 2007, the UP courts were hit by serial blasts by the Indian Mujahideen (IM).

An email sent by IM commander Atif Ameen and Ariz Junaid from a cyber café in east Delhi stated that the strikes were in retaliation against the ill-treatment of alleged Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist Walliullah by lawyers in the Varanasi courts.

Walliullah, a cleric from Phulpur near Allahabad, has now been convicted for the Sankatmochan Temple blast in Varanasi on March 7, 2006. He was thrashed by lawyers when he was produced in the Varanasi local court due to which his trial was shifted to Ghaziabad. While Atif Ameen was gunned down in the Batla House gunfight, Ariz Junaid, the key IM bomb-maker, is still at large.

Official sources said the Lucknow courts were hit as three Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists had been arrested by the Special Task Force of the UP Police in November 2007 on charges of trying to target Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.

Faizabad was hit as the trial of those involved in the Jaish-e-Mohammed suicide attack on the Ayodhya temple was going on in the local district courts.