Sleuths find another hard nut to crack

Lack of information creates problems for security forces

NEW DELHI: A day after the bomb attack at the Ajmer Sharif, intelligence agencies are staring at two major challenges as they try to unlock the mystery behind the series of recent bomb blasts targeting Muslims.

One, a serious lack of deep intelligence from within the Muslim community.

Second, misleading and sometimes fake leads and questionable probe results from some of the major blasts in recent times.

Though many spirited leaks from the intelligence are blaming the Harkat-ul-Jehad Islami, the terror group suspected to be behind the bomb attacks in Hyderabad, sources say that vague claim wasn’t “enough to get to the bottom of the case”.

Sources say the recent spate of bombings are primarily the actions of locals. The foreign elements may be involved as idealogues, strategic planners or financiers.

With the“democratisation of terrorism”, there has been a significant drop in both risk and cost of making bomb. And this has further complicated the work of intelligence agencies.

“We hardly have any intelligence officers from the Muslim community. It is a difficult task for outsiders to get into the heart of the society and generate regular inputs,” says a senior intelligence official.

While the Intelligence Bureau has very few Muslim officers at the senior levels, the Research and Analysis Wing do not take on board any Muslims.

Another problem facing the intelligence network is the lack of proper flow of inputs from the ground through state polices.

Though there are multi-agency centres at state levels where the state police, and representatives of central intelligence agencies coordinate, these systems haven’t really been able to make any major breakthroughs.

Over the past 24 hours, at least a couple of sources in the central intelligence set up told DNA that what is most worrying to them as they begin to investigate Ajmer Sharif blast is the “messed up” investigations into some of the recent blasts.

Both the officials highlighted the botch-up in the investigations into Malegaon bomb blasts of September 2006 as a particularly striking case. The case is now with the CBI.