A series of bombings. No claim of responsibility. No prime suspects.
Wednesday’s explosions in India’s financial capital Mumbai ticked a wearily familiar list of boxes in a country which is no stranger to bombings that go unclaimed and lack any transparent motive.
Briefing reporters on Thursday about the investigation, Indian Home Minister P. Chidambaram cast the net of suspicion about as wide as it would go.
“All groups hostile to India are on the radar. We are not ruling out anything, we are not ruling in anything. We are looking at everyone,” he said.
“Whoever perpetrated the attack has worked in a very callous manner. Maybe it’s a very small group working in a clandestine manner,” he added.
Chidambaram’s remarks were partly aimed at preempting the knee-jerk accusations of Pakistani complicity that invariably surface after any act of terror in India.
New Delhi has long accused its archrival and neighbor of aiding and abetting the militant groups who have carried out attacks on Indian soil, including the traumatic 2008 assault on Mumbai by Islamist gunmen that claimed 166 lives.
However, his comments also highlighted the information vacuum which all too often surrounds seemingly arbitrary incidents.
There were several such attacks last year, including a blast at a packed restaurant in the western city of Pune, which killed 16 people including several foreigners.
Low-intensity twin explosions wounded about a dozen people at a cricket stadium in Bangalore and a girl was killed by a bomb at a religious bathing site in Hinduism’s holiest city of Varanasi.
In September last year, two Taiwanese men were shot outside Delhi’s main mosque, while most recently, a crude device planted outside the Delhi High Court in May failed to go off after its detonator malfunctioned in the fierce summer heat.
None of these cases has been solved. There were no claims of responsibility and it is not even confirmed that they were part of a terrorist strategy, with suggestions that at least one may have been part of a criminal vendetta.
Given the lack of a proven suspect or tangible motive, politicians and the media tend to fall back on vague notions of terrorist intent.
Wednesday’s Mumbai blasts were “an attack on the heart of India,” Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan said.
“India is under assault,” the Times of India said in an editorial yesterday, adding immediately: “One doesn’t know yet who is responsible.”
The idea of “India” as the target inevitably implies the possible involvement of elements from archrival Pakistan and numerous commentators noted that the blasts occurred just before scheduled peace talks between the Indian and Pakistani foreign ministers later this month.
A favored suspect is the Indian Mujahideen, a homegrown group with links to Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistan-based militant outfit blamed for the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
The Indian Mujahideen were behind a series of bombings in Indian cities in 2008-2009, but their past operations have been marked by a swift claim of responsibility.
Some security analysts say that the police, in the absence of any hard evidence, have often attempted to build false cases to conceal the lack of progress in recent cases.
“This is the standard routine,” said Ajai Sahni, executive director of the Institute of Conflict Management in New Delhi.
“The police have no real forensic capability and they fabricate evidence all the time and then go to the court with the wrong accused,” Sahni said.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was