Anti Terror In India – And Others

Blair has long faced criticism over the death of Jean Charles de Menezes, an innocent Brazilian shot dead by police who mistook him for a suicide bomber in the wake of July 2005 bombings in London, which killed 56 people. (via AFP: Political discord after Met chief quits).

The discussion in India

Mass paranoia creating a feeding frenzy

The Times Now news channel had a discussion on 2nd October 2008, anchored by Arnab Goswami, where panelists (Prashant Bhushan, Harish Salve, Swapan Dasgupta) were discussing the pros and cons of the support by ‘liberal’ lawyers to alleged Muslim terrorists – against a ‘communal police.’

Both sides of the discussion were finally on the same side – defending the police or attacking the police. Neither side brought out the really significant aspect – which the real, hard, quantitative numbers to substantiate or buttress their arguments.

The Indian record

India has the lowest prison population in the world – and the lowest police-to-population ratio in the world. So, clearly, India is NOT a police state in any sense of the word – nor the crime capital of the world.

The international experience

The UK used many ‘anti terror’ laws in India and on the mainland too – to suppress Indian freedom fighters and the Irish freedom fighters. The US has used the Patriot Act and other similar laws to set new records in torture and detention. Spain used similar laws against the Basque/ETA terrorists.

US wants to check what suspects read and write

Does India want to join this club! Are there alternatives?

Let’s do the numbers

Indian police has a superb network of ‘humint.’ But, they need more than that – for neutralizing terror.

There are finally less than 1000 SIMI + HuJI activists who could be future terrorists. There are a similar 1000 Kashmiri terrorists. What India needs to do, is to set up a national database on these 1000 suspects – allot (say) teams of 5 policemen to these 1000 suspects.

Monitoring the activities of the 1000 suspects cannot be a national pastime. With neural networks and similar ‘intelligent’ systems, India police should be able to improve their ‘intelligence.’