Hyderabad: The year has seen two major terror strikes in our part of the world for which clear intelligence alerts were given in advance. In February, 49 CRPF jawans were killed in a suicide attack at Pulwama, of which the intelligence agencies had provided advance alerts. In Sri Lanka, too, alerts regarding possible attacks had been issued 10 days before Sunday’s attacks.
The Indian government is said to have informed the Sri Lankan government, and the Sri Lankan police chief reportedly named the group, its members and provided phone numbers. In both cases the government and its security enforcement agencies did not react.
Happymon Jacob, a national security expert says the two cases are different: “Numerous intel reports are submitted to the agency, some with specific information, some with general information. It is not easy to act upon every report in order to avoid attacks but this does not justify it.
“In the case of Pulwama, there was intel that Jaish-e-Mohammed was active but failure in executing it, but post the attack, instead of fixing accountability, the focus was more on reacting to Pakistan. There are many reports that the authorities act upon but they are never talked about. For instance, the authorities nipped a terror attacked in Banihal area of J&K. We never talk about these avoided operations but focus on failures. But I do agree that Sri Lanka government should have acted upon specific details.”
