Chapter III continues.....

The terrorist attack in the IISc campus in Bangalore on 28 December 2005 represents a departure from targeting security forces personnel and ordinary civilians. In this case, scientists and scholars were the targets. The attack took place in the middle of an International Conference organized by the Operational Research Society of India. A former professor was killed and five persons were injured when an unidentified gunman opened fire and lobbed grenades in the IISc campus. The attack, as later revealed, was carried out by a LeT member, who was also the outfit’s south Indian commander, Abdul Rehman. He was subsequently arrested. The terrorist motive in this case was to target the Indian IT industry and instill fear in the scientific community and research institutes.

On 6 March 2005, a Delhi-based LeT cell was eliminated, that hatched a plot to attack a series of IT centres of India in connivance with the banned SIMI. All these indicated an expanding terrorist network in the southern part of the country and the targeting of the symbols of emerging India—the IT sector, scientific establishments and nuclear power plants. The arrested terrorists were also planning to attack the Indian Military Academy (IMA) in Dehradun.

The then National Security Advisor, M. K. Narayanan, stated on 28 July 2006 that there was a serious threat from the LeT to nuclear installations in the country. Writing in Strategic Studies (2002), an in-house journal of Pakistan’s Institute of Strategic Studies in Islamabad, a hard-line analyst, Dr. Shireen Mazari, has opined: “Of all South Asian states, India’s nuclear facilities are perhaps the most vulnerable to nuclear terrorism … aggravated by its thriving underworld and over a dozen insurgencies....” Sri Lanka Government has also warned that the micro-light aircrafts of the erstwhile LTTE could threaten India’s nuclear installations in Kalpakkam near Chennai.

While Islamic fundamentalist-led terrorism is the main sheet-anchor for undermining India’s national security, there are also several other insurgencies around the country getting converted to terrorist threats—the Naxalites, ULFA, PWG, Nagas, TNLU, Manipuris, etc.

to be continued...