Issue 7 | 30 Dec. 2006

Terrorists' New Best Friend: B'lore!

Public memory is short, and so you may not remember that in 2006, terror made a grand entry to namma Bengaluru. The attack on the Indian Institute of Science which snuffed out the life of IIT Professor MK Puri, shook a stunned police into swift action; six months after the attack, investigations by the intelligence department and city police are yet to reach a conclusive end, though it is clear that the Pakistan-based Lashkar-eTayba was the mastermind. 

A few months after the attack, a special police team arrested a number of Lashkar operatives, including the prize-catch, Razi-Ur-Rehman alias Abdul Rehman, Lashkar's head of south India operations, from Nalgonda in AP. Rehman had masterminded the IISc terror strike along with his associates. The group members who planned and plotted the IISc attack were believed to be involved in a number of minor attacks in Hyderabad and Bangalore earlier.

But still, this did not change the way people perceive our beloved city. Bangalore is still perceived as a peaceful city (whatever that means) by most people.

Until the IISc attack, the Bangalore police used to treat any report of the terrorists targeting the city lightly, but 2006 decisively changed that mindset. Now they are monitoring all intelligence reports on a regular basis and keeping a watch on suspicious people visiting Bangalore. IT companies are also being kept under strict security surveillance.
On the one hand, the city continues to have its share of romantics who continue to be fooled by the greenery and glamour, the hi-tech glitz and the software sizzle. On the other hand, ask the police and they will tell you that Bangalore is today home to operatives of Pakistan-based terror outfits like the Lashakr-e-Tayiba. While 2006 saw them coming out to the open, their Target Bangalore was preceded by years of planning.

According to Intelligence reports, Lashkar operatives had been planning a major strike in Bangalore ever since the Dec 13, 2001 attack on Parliament.

In 1994, ISI agents responsible for bomb explosions in the Andhra Pradesh Express and Madina Express trains in southern India, reportedly went into hiding in Bangalore.

Since 1995, the Karnataka police have arrested more than two dozen Bangalore-based youth who were trained in terrorism in Pakistan. The Bangalore police have special instructions to look out for ISI agents.

In March 2005, the Delhi police killed three Lashkar terrorists who had set up a terror cell in Bangalore.

Mohammad Arif 'Ashfaq,' the Lashkar operative who was sentenced to death for his role in the attack on the Red Fort in New Delhi, told interrogators that a terror cell was set up in Bangalore to target Wipro's Azim Premji and Infosys' N R Narayana Murthy.

In the opinion of senior police officers, the IT companies "have been slow in addressing their vulnerabilities to terror attacks. The police though are taking no chances and are co-ordinating with leading IT companies on how to prevent such attacks.