India must boost counter-terror operations -PM

INDIA: Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Saturday that this week’s attack in Delhi served to remind everyone that the country urgently needed to boost its intelligence gathering abilities.

“The terrorist attack in Delhi last Wednesday is a stark reminder to us that there can be no let-up in our vigilance,” Singh said during an address to a multiparty gathering on national integration, three days after a bomb ripped through a crowd outside the High Court, killing 13 people. “We must continuously upgrade and strengthen our investigating agencies and our intelligence gathering apparatus to deal more effectively with the newer methods and technologies” adopted by terrorists, he said.

The prime minister said his government had done much to bolster intelligence-sharing between state and central agencies and had strengthened coastal security, but admitted that “major challenges still remain”.

Experts say Indian security agencies, and in particular the police, suffer from underfunding, a lack of training and poor intelligence gathering and sharing.

As part of the investigation into Wednesday’s attack, police in Indian Kashmir detained a man suspected of sending an email claiming responsibility for the court bombing. The unverified email, which said the Pakistan-based militant group Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami (HuJI) was behind the blast, had been traced to a cybercafe in Kishtwar, near the Kashmiri city of Jammu. Federal investigators have yet to confirm whether the email was indeed from HuJI. Another claim of responsibility, apparently from a home-grown militant outfit called Indian Mujahedeen, was sent to media on Thursday.

New Delhi, Sunday, AFP