Punjab blast catches security agencies napping

Ludhiana/Chandigarh, Oct 15 - Punjab's hard-earned peace was shattered by the blast inside a cinema hall in the bustling industrial city of Ludhiana Sunday, at a time when the people of this largely prosperous state were preparing for the upcoming festival season.

What has left the security agencies in Punjab baffled is the fact that Punjab was not even included in the 'hit-list' of states likely to be targeted by terrorist groups operating in India during the festival season.

The security advisory on possible target states was for Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh. But the cinema hall blast proved yet again that terrorists could strike anywhere.

Six people were killed and over 25 injured in the powerful blast during a Sunday evening show at the Shingaar cinema hall complex in Ludhiana's Samrala crossing area. The cinema hall is frequented by scores of migrant labourers and workers engaged in jobs in this industrial city. The cinema hall screens Bhojpuri films regularly in view of the demand from the migrant labourers.

While reacting to the Ludhiana blast, former Punjab supercop K.P.S. Gill pointed out: 'Cells of the Babbar Khalsa international are trying to re-activate in Punjab. They still have their links in Pakistan and also with other terrorist outfits. The cinema hall blast here came within hours of the bomb blast at the Sufi shrine of Ajmer in Rajasthan Friday.'

Punjab witnessed large-scale terrorism between 1982 and 1995 as terrorist groups demanded the separate Sikh homeland of Khalistan.

'We had issued an alert for the festival season,' Punjab's director general of police N.P.S. Aulakh said.

However, the Punjab police alert seemed nowhere in place as the bomb in the cinema hall was presumably planted during the show interval. The presumption came from Aulakh himself.

A top Punjab police official told IANS that the blast caught the state police and other central security agencies completely off-guard.

'We never expected any such thing to take place in Punjab. There was no indication from the intelligence agencies either,' the official said.

The last major terrorist attack in the region was the assassination of former Punjab chief minister Beant Singh by a human bomb terrorist at the high-security Punjab secretariat complex in Chandigarh Aug 31, 1995.

Punjab-based terrorist groups like Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) did figure in the twin bomb blasts in cinema halls in Delhi in 2005. There have been reports occasionally with security agencies here that terrorists groups had made several attempts to re-group and re-active their cells in Punjab. The Punjab Police seized over six kilograms of RDX in January this year near Jalandhar.

(c) Indo-Asian News Service

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