The Hindu Business Line : Attack on the IISc — South India on terror cross-hair

The Wednesday attack at the IISc does not appear to have been targeted at any scientist but generally at the IT industry for which Bangalore is best known. If, as is suspected, a jihadi group is involved, it could be, besides political and religious reasons, with an economic angle. Perhaps, the attack is symbolic — at an important source of foreign exchange earnings, keep foreign IT companies away from India and impact the stock market, which attracts considerable overseas funds, says B . Raman.

A Professor Emeritus in the Mathematics Department of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi, M. C. Puri, was killed and four scientists were injured seriously when an unidentified gunman opened fire indiscriminately on a group of scientists, largely Indian with some foreigners, as they were coming out of a conference hall in the prestigious Indian Institute of Science (IISc) campus in Bangalore on Wednesday.

The victims, who were attending an international conference on research relating to infrastructure, were reportedly walking to an adjacent building for dinner at the end of the day's proceedings.

A report on the attack, carried by The Hindu, gives the following details:

"Police said that at 7-15 p.m., a man wearing a camouflage jacket started firing randomly with automatic rifle when delegates at an international conference of the Operational Research Society of India were coming out of the J. N. Tata Auditorium in the IISc Campus.

"Reports said that the man fired at an adjoining laboratory and a car and started running towards the parking lot on the right side of the auditorium. Police could not confirm reports that there were two other persons and that they had come in an Ambassador car.

"The police found five magazines, believed to be from an AK-47 rifle, a used grenade, a live grenade and spent bullets in front of the auditorium."

The person or persons responsible for the attack have so far not been arrested or identified. The incident coincided with the reported shifting of Abu Salem, a member of the mafia group headed by Karachi-based Dawood Ibrahim, to Bangalore to undergo a lie detector and other forensic tests in connection with the investigation into his alleged involvement in the Mumbai blast of March 1993, in which nearly 250 people were killed. The explosions were got carried out by Dawood Ibrahim, then based in Dubai, with the help of some Mumbai-based extremists, who were taken to Pakistan via Dubai and got trained and armed by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

Abu Salem, who was arrested by the Portuguese authorities, was recently extradited by them to India after he and Monica Bedi, his companion, completed a prison sentence in Portugal after being convicted on charges of entering the country with false travel documents. There is so far no evidence to connect the IISc shooting incident with the shifting of Abu Salem.

Sleeper cells of pro-Al Qaeda jihadi terrorist organisations of Pakistan and Bangladesh operating in South India have come to the notice of the police from time to time. The most active in South India has been the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) followed by the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI).

Occasionally, there have also been reports of the presence and activities of other Pakistan-based organisations such as the Hizbul Mujahideen (HM), an indigenous Kashmiri organisation whose Amir, Syed Salahuddin, operates from Pakistan, and the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM), a Pakistani organisation like LET and HUJI.

Of these organisations, LET has been the most active. While its activities in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) and other North States are controlled from its headquarters at Muridke, near Lahore, its activities in Western and Southern India are controlled by its headquarters in Saudi Arabia and occasionally from Dubai.

Its sleeper cells in South India operate either as LET or under other names such as the Muslim Defence Force (MDF) in Tamil Nadu. While the activities of the HUJI in J&K and other parts of North India are controlled by its headquarters in Pakistan, its activities in southern Thailand, Myanmar, and East and South India are believed to be controlled by its branch office in Bangladesh.

LET, HUJI and JEM, all of which are members of Osama bin Laden's International Islamic Front (IIF) for Jihad Against the Crusaders and the Jewish People, look upon J&K, Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh and Junagadh in Gujarat as rightfully belonging to Pakistan.

They want to `liberate' them from Indian control as a first step in their plan to `liberate' the Muslims of North and South India and incorporate their `homelands' in the so-called Islamic Caliphate advocated by Osama bin Laden. They also similarly want to `liberate' the Muslim majority areas of Sri Lanka's Eastern Province and ultimately incorporate them into the Islamic Caliphate.

In addition to such political and religious reasons, their focus on South India has a strong economic angle too. That is the large concentration of information technology (IT) and outsourcing companies, Indian as well as foreign, in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai.

A defining characteristic of the post-9/11 terrorist strikes of Al Qaeda and the IIF has been to step up acts of economic terrorism. The terrorist strikes in Bali, Mombasa, Casablanca, Istanbul, and Egypt besides on the French oil tanker Limburg, all had a strong economic motivation.

Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai, in the calculation of the terrorists and their sponsors in Pakistan, are attractive targets for acts of economic terrorism. Successful acts of economic terrorism there could — so they believe — affect an important source of India's foreign exchange earnings, keep foreign IT companies away from India and affect India's stock market, which attracts a large volume of foreign institutional investment based on the value of the shares of the IT companies.

Since Gen Pervez Musharraf seized power in October 1999, he has embarked on a programme for the diversification of the Pakistani economy, which is now mainly dependent on the export of textiles, sports and leather goods.

In this connection, considerable attention is being paid, with Chinese assistance, to develop Pakistan's IT capability and attract foreign software and outsourcing companies to Pakistan. The ISI, too, calculates that uncertainties in the minds of foreign IT and outsourcing companies about security conditions in South India could benefit Pakistan.

After the neutralisation of a LET sleeper cell in Delhi in March last, the Delhi Police had repeatedly been sounding wake-up calls about the plans of the jihadi terrorists to target IT companies in Bangalore. Media reports have also been speaking of a number of hoax threats addressed to IT companies in Bangalore since March.

The recent hoax message of an attempt by the Al Qaeda to blow up Parliament had also reportedly originated from Tirunelveli, a hotbed of the activities of the Al Ummah, which had organised a number of serial blasts at Coimbatore in February 1998. All these were not hoax calls from pranksters trying to create a sensation. These were probably hoax messages of suspected jihadi terrorists, apparently trying to test the reflexes of the security authorities and create in their mind a hoax fatigue.

Why did the persons responsible for the December 28 incident target the scientists attending an international conference? It does not appear to have been a targeted attempt to kill any particular scientist though media reports speak of the presence of some space scientists at the conference. South India, in general, and Bangalore, in particular, not only have a large concentration of IT experts, but also famous scientists.

How to strengthen physical security in South India without creating unnecessary alarm and nervousness, which could economically prove counter-productive? This is a question that needs urgent attention from the Centre and the four State governments.

(The author is a former Additional Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India.)