BOMBAY, 13 July 2006 — Prime Minister Manmohan Singh struck a note of defiance yesterday saying the war against terror will be won and India will never be beaten by terrorists, a day after bombs ripped through trains in India’s financial hub Bombay. Police began a massive hunt for the bombers in an attack that police say bore all the hallmarks of extremists.
Manmohan said the return to work in Bombay after the blasts during evening rush hour Tuesday, showed the determination of the country to fight terrorism.
“They have not yet understood that we will never let them win,” he said in a nationally televised address as investigators picked through the debris seeking clues to the country’s worst attack in more than a decade.
“This is not the first time that the enemies of our nation have tried to undermine our peace and prosperity,” Manmohan said.
Eight blasts went off in the space of 15 minutes along the Western Railway line, tearing open first-class train carriages that were packed with people. The toll was 200 dead and over 700 injured, Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister R.R. Patil told the state assembly.
Local papers claimed police were probing links between the Students’ Islamic Movement of India and Lashkar-e-Taiba.
“The modus operandi appears to be similar to Lashkar-e-Taiba,” Maharashtra state police chief P.S. Pasricha told reporters. “I cannot categorically say that it was them as those (forensic) reports have yet to come in,” he added. Police said no arrests had been made.
Earlier, Foreign Ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna repeated Indian demands that Pakistan crack down on militants, who New Delhi says operate from Islamabad’s part of Kashmir.
“We would urge Pakistan to take urgent steps to dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism on the territory under its control and act resolutely against individuals and groups who are responsible for terrorist violence,” he said.
His comments followed remarks by Pakistan’s foreign minister, Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, who said in a Tuesday speech at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace in Washington that solving the Kashmir issue “is the best way of tackling extremism in South Asia.”
“We find it appalling that Kasuri should seek to link this blatant and inhuman act of terrorism against men, women and children to the so-called lack of resolution of the dispute between India and Pakistan,” Sarna told reporters
Deadly high explosives were used in the blasts, security expert Col. M.P. Chaudhary said, who raised India’s first Anti-Hijack Squad, which is now with the National Security Guard. He said after visiting the blast site at Jogeshwari that he could make out it was a high explosive from the smell. When asked about the contents of the explosives, Col. Chaudhary said that it could be RDX, Semtex, HMX or even TNT. He pointed out that high explosives have a “shattering effect” while low explosives have “pressure effect”.
Relatives trawled hospitals, searching for people who failed to return from work. Manuel Fernandes had visited six hospitals in search of his brother. “He was on one of the trains but he hasn’t come home,” said Fernandes.
“There have been no calls. Nobody knows where he is.”
And police who were out in force on the streets after the blasts said the city remained calm with no reported communal clashes.
Many residents were riding the trains again yesterday, saying the violence would not keep them away from work.
“Terrorists can do anything they like,” 52-year-old businessman Dilip Khadaria said. “We are businessmen, we will be going back to work. It won’t hamper our business, it won’t stop our work.”
— With input from agencies
