Author: Harinder Baweja
Publication: India Today
Date: January 8, 2001
The dangers to it are less threatening
but the US has had a straightforward counter-terrorism policy in place
for years: make no concessions to terrorists and strike no deals; bring
terrorists to justice; and isolate and apply pressure on states that sponsor
terrorism to make them change.
For India, terrorism has been "Threat
No. 1'' since the early 1980s. But after two decades there is neither a
policy nor a broad outline. In fact, there aren't adequate laws to deal
with the growing menace that former Punjab director-general of police K.P.S.
Gill says is "aimed at undermining the state".
The archaic Indian Penal Code does
not define a terrorist. It still talks of "thugs" and "dacoits". Similarly,
explosives don't include substances like RDX. Apart from the Disturbed
Areas Act, insurgency-affected states like Jammu and Kashmir, Assam and
Manipur are governed by virtually the same laws as other states. But as
Gurbachan Jagat, former Jammu and Kashmir DGP and current chief of the
BSF, puts it, "The threat is no longer confined to a few states. The ISI
has branched out all over India and there are no laws to deal with inter-state
movements." A police team from Kashmir, for instance, cannot make arrests
in another state unless the local police cooperates. Similarly, the Intelligence
Bureau, often armed with specific information has to await local cooperation
because it does not have statutory powers to arrest. Moreover, rivalries
and one-upmanship games of different police forces prevent a cohesive anti-terrorist
strategy from emerging. The ISI exploits this fully.
The only law designed to deal with
the terrorist threat-TADA-was repealed in 1996 following an outcry that
it was directed against minorities. In early 1999 the Law Commission came
up with a draft Prevention of Terrorism Bill but the Government shied away
from enacting it after human rights activists and some states opposed it
for being another version of TADA.
Last September, the Home Ministry,
with inputs from intelligence agencies, proposed a federal agency investigating
terrorist crimes. While a conference of police chiefs endorsed the idea,
it was opposed at the conference of chief ministers. For lack of political
agreement, a fire-fighting approach of pumping in troops persists. The
roots of the problem are rarely addressed. Like how the administration
in Manipur is subverted to the extent where even senior bureaucrats pay
10 per cent of their salaries as taxes to insurgents.
