Being on guard against perpetrators of terror

The car blast near the Red Fort on November 10 — later identified as a terror incident by the government — has shocked the nation. Often, such incidents spark immediate speculation and deepen divides, with all sorts of narratives not based on facts fanned by various parties. Against such a backdrop, the media must be commended for providing exhaustive yet objective and fact-based coverage of the incident this time. This is the ideal way we can build public opinion against terror and induce our society to lend its weight to our security agencies fighting the uneven war that is terrorism.

- RK Raghavan

The question that haunts many after the car blast, the extensive details about the planning, and a video attributed to the suicide bomber, Umar un-Nabi, that emerged afterwards — especially regarding the involvement of a network of doctors — is why and how a group of white-collar professionals, all of whom were well-established in society, got so radicalised that they ended up giving effect to a deadly terror attack. The background of the suspects identified/held so far in the case alone would strongly suggest that when it comes to religious fanaticism and hatred, nothing matters. How the conspirators executed their plan — or at least a part of it— unnoticed by the many security agencies spread out across the nation is also intriguing.

Was there a security lapse, as some have asked? This question is tendentious because it ignores the enormous challenges policing faces in such a large country, as well as the near-impossibility of tracking arrivals and departures of persons in a national Capital as diverse as Delhi, to preempt such incidents.