27 August 2007

India blames Pakistani, Bangladeshi groups for bombing

The Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, has blamed unnamed "terrorist organisations based in Bangladesh and Pakistan" for the recent bombings in Hyderabad, which killed 42 people.

Meanwhile, Indian President Pratibha Patil has indicated that the intention of the bombers had been to harm harmony between Hindus and Muslims in the city (BBC).

Is the Indian authorities' tendency to blame most terrorist attacks on Pakistani -- and recently Bangladeshi -- groups a symptom of the fact that they do not possess adequate knowledge of terrorist groups possibly operating within their own country? In other words, why did it have to be Pakistanis or Bangladeshis, and not Indians?

The very idea that terrorists from Pakistan and Bangladesh supposedly cooperated in this attack is kind of hard to take given the sheer distance between the two countries. On the other hand, operatives representing unsavoury groups in the two countries may have met up in India, in which case someone was possibly harbouring them, and that someone might be an Indian group. So any way you look at it, blaming Pakistani and Bangladeshi groups looks like a copout.

No comments:

Something Even More Magical

In other news...