India’s Record on Terror Attacks Holds Lessons for Hyderabad

Agence France-Presse â€" Getty Images A sand sculpture at a beach in Puri, Orissa, on Feb. 22, a day after twin blasts occurred in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh.

NEW DELHI â€"A special court in Delhi on Tuesday issued arrest warrants for 10 members of the Indian Mujahideen, a banned terrorist organization, including its founder, Riyaz Bhatkal, in connection with the Feb. 21 Hyderabad blasts.

The warrants, which do not allow for bail, come a day after the National Investigation Agency, or N.I.A., the country’s lead investigative agency for terror-related crimes, took charge of the case, with assistance from lcal authorities. “The case has been transferred to the N.I.A. to probe it in a speedy manner,” P. Sabitha Indra Reddy, Andhra Pradesh’s home minister, said on Monday after a meeting to review the status of the investigation.

The swift change of the lead investigator reflects the precautions the authorities are taking to ensure a thorough inquiry into the bombings, whose death toll climbed to 17 after one victim died Tuesday night.

S. A. Huda, the director general of the Andhra Pradesh Police, said in an interview with India Ink shortly after the bombings that the police would be careful not “to jump the gun.” The cautious note he struck may have had something to do with the state’s past experience in assigning responsibility in such cases, as well as the country’s record in solving terror-related crimes.

India was four! th on a list of countries most affected by terrorism in 2011, according to a global terrorism index, but it is also a country where the conviction rates of terrorists are disproportionately low.

Historical data on convictions in terror-related cases have not been made public by the government, but a press release by the Home Ministry in February last year offered a glimpse of the track record of India’s investigative agencies.

The statement noted that there had been 46 major “terrorist incidents” since May 2000. Convictions had been obtained in nine of these cases, and seven remained unsolved.

Chargesheets had been filed in 29 of the remaining 30 cases, and of these, 19 had gone to trial. The Home Ministry also mentioned acquittals in two cases ut did not provide any details, except that the acquittals were under appeal.

The chargesheets, however, are not an indicator of the strength of the government’s case against suspects in terrorism cases, said Ajit Singh, a research fellow with the South Asia Terrorism Portal who specializes in conflicts in India. “Chargesheets have to be filed after a terrorist attack. It does not mean the police have been able to solve the crime,” he added.

In terror-related cases, “Indian police still don’t have the training and motivation to properly investigate cases and find prosecutable evidence,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “There are repeated practices of simply rounding up the usual suspects, torturing them in custody, which can produce misleading information simply to stop the suffering,” she added.

The seven unsolved cases include the 2010 German Bakery blast in Pune, Maharashtra, which killed at least 17 people. The Jamia Masjid shoo! ting in D! elhi, which occurred the same year, is also listed as an unsolved case. The attack targeted a group of foreign nationals, two of whom were injured, though no fatalities were reported.

The 2007 Mecca Masjid blast in Hyderabad, one of the last major terror incidents in Andhra Pradesh before the bombings in late February, has been listed as being “reinvestigated.” In this case, the local police and the National Investigation Agency, which was put in charge of the case in 2011, each have named different suspects.

Several Muslims had been charged after radical Muslim organizations like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Harkatul-ul-Jihad-e-Islami were believed to be behind the attacks. But a subsequent investigation by the National Investigation Agency, pointed to the involvement of Hindu right-wing organizations.

Historically, India has struggled to create effective laws designed specifically to combat terrorism, a stud published in the Columbia Journal of Asian Law in 2006 suggested.

For example, the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act, known as T.A.D.A., which came into force in 1987, was a response to the growing militancy in Punjab. The act, which was supposed to expire after two years, was in effect until 1995 through renewals by the Parliament, but was allowed to lapse following widespread criticism from both political parties and civil rights groups for human rights abuses and for ineffectiveness.

Statistics reported by the government in October 1993 “showed that only 0.81 percent of the 52,268 individuals detained under T.A.D.A. since its enactment had been convicted,” according to the journal.

The Prevention of Terrorism Act, or P.O.T.A., was passed in 2002 by a Bharatiya Janata Party-led government, following the 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament. But it suffered a s! imilar fa! te as its predecessor. “Conviction rates under P.O.T.A. have been very low, and the number of cases withdrawn for lack of evidence has been quite high,” the law journal said.

The act was repealed in 2004 by the Congress Party-led government, which deemed it a draconian law.

“Acts like T.A.D.A. and P.O.T.A. have had a poisonous influence on the police force,” Praful Bidwai, a political analyst, said in a phone interview. “They incorporated provisions where the burden of proof was on the accused rather than the state, encouraging violation of fundamental liberties.”

Antiterror laws have been passed in India with the understanding that terrorist incidents are a different kind of crime that require special laws. But stronger provisions have also lent them to abuse and misuse. The T.A.D.A., for example, permitted confessions made to police officers while in custody as “substantial evidence,” it also extended the period o preventive detention up to one year before charges were filed. The act made it virtually impossible for the accused to get bail.

The police also had incentives to book people under these acts that gave them greater power. Antiterrorism laws in India have been “widely misused to target political opponents, tribal groups, religious and ethnic minorities, and Dalits,” a Human Rights Watch press release from 2012 said.

But laws that result in human rights abuses are “counterproductive because abuses are used as a recruiting tool by extremist groups,” the Human Rights Watch report pointed out.

Over the years, the government has introduced amendments to existing laws like the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act 1967, to add legislative teeth to the fight against terror. The most recent set of amendments passed in 2012, which was met by strong opposition within the Parliament. Politicians ! like Sita! ram Yechury of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) likened the amendment bill to P.O.T.A., where the burden of proof was again placed on the accused, the Times of India reported.