Security agencies: whither professionalism?

posted in dawn


MANY clues, which could have led security agencies to reach the mastermind of the suicide bombers, had been lost when the house, where a suicide bomber was killed, was handed over to the owners soon after the incident.

A visit to the house by this correspondent, on the morning of the second day, where the suicide bomber was killed on Friday, revealed that the debris in the room was lying, which was a clear proof of the inefficiency of the intelligence agencies and bomb disposal squad.

No attempt had been made to take all of it for investigation. Because the bomb disposal squad and the investigating police and army officers had reportedly no facility of search lights even to find out body parts of the bomber.

They were using dim lights of their mobile phones in the dark. It was Thursday evening and the light of the house had been cut off after the hand-grenade attack and blast. So it was not possible for them to find any clue.

The police also let the people of the area to enter the house which was again against the principles of investigations. The family, which owned the house, was removing the debris which was in fact the responsibility of the investigators.

Before realising the importance of the scene of crime, the officials had handed over the house to the owners just after the incident missing all important clues. Although there were more chances to find the chip and other evidences because after the huge blast, many articles in the room were still intact even major part of the black shirt of the bomber had also been found.The police and intelligence department officials, who claimed that they talked to the suicide bomber and engaged him for three long hours on cellphone, did not make any effort even to find out the SIM of his mobile set from the debris.

The bomber called his three associates and before removing his jacket asked somebody that as he had missed his target, so can he ram into the police and blow himself up. The intelligence agencies, despite having state of the art gadgets to trace the calls, failed to record his conversation and identity the number which he had called for hours for help.

It is important to note that the suicide bomber who fluently spoke, Pashto, Urdu and Punjabi while talking in the last minutes of the blast was shot by a policeman when he removed the jacket and was holding it in his hands.

The senior officials and policeman who killed the suicide bomber requested Dawn that the name of the shooter was not being disclosed to the media because he could easily become target of the militants.

He is a low ranking official and was very close to the bomber while trying to convince him to surrender. He told this scribe immediately after the operation, when the bombers removed jackets in such situations, it meant that he wanted to carry out the blast. Therefore, he was killed at that time.

The official privy to the movement of the suicide bomber, before trapped inside a house in the Kohat main bazaar, said that a local young man with beard was guiding him to take him to the target. But soon after noticing the presence of police, ran away from the bazaar which had been sealed.