Abhijit Bhattacharyya | From 26/11 to Delhi 10/11: Terror Raises Bar In India

It was another November seventeen years ago when terrorists from across the border made mincemeat of India’s security system for three whole days, shaking the nation’s financial capital to its core, bringing it to a grinding halt for days. Fast forward to another November: The blast near Delhi’s Red Fort on November 10, 2025 was terror at a different level: from the direct assault in Mumbai to indirect tactics to massacre people in India’s capital. The symbolic gesture and importance of the 2025 terror strike is hard to miss. The suicide mission was undertaken with the detonation of a “chemical weapon” at the Red Fort-Chandni Chowk confluence -- the commercial hub of Old Delhi and a stone’s throw from the iconic Jama Masjid. This was the heart of Mughal India, which was ruled from the Red Fort across the road, and later the seat of Britain’s empire. This is where daily transactions involving crores of rupees take place, enriching the economics and commerce of India.

The shift in the modus operandi was stark. Mumbai 2008 was raw physical penetration by outsiders from across the border in neighbouring Pakistan. Delhi 2025 so far seems an indigenous and home-grown plot through a cocktail of physical-cum-psychological terror to leave a deep scar on the nation’s psyche. The location, next to the historic Red Fort, was significant.

The self-driven car suicide bomb detonation on November 10 appears to be the culmination of a long-term plan executed via a sleek, silent and sophisticated chain of command, control and communication centre spanning several Indian states. That is worrisome. While Delhi 2025 seems a sordid reminder of the Pakistan-sponsored Mumbai blasts of March 1993, as well as the mayhem in our financial capital in November 2008, the Red Fort terror seems something new and more than what meets the eye.

The Red Fort strike appears to manifest the “Strategy Indirect Approach” in its full ferocity to show how to pose a strategic threat to India’s sovereignty. Most of Delhi’s English media described the gory event with characteristic elan: “Doctors of White-Collar Terror”; “Ammonium Nitrate used by blast could be from Gujarat”; “Lens on Pak, Bangladesh MBBS holder” and “Al Falah students, faculty, villagers in grip of anxiety”. Could not the media, however, delve deeper to the genesis of terror and come up with independent analyses due to the suicide bombing’s location, position, course, direction and impact?

While terror has been broadly defined by the internationally recognised Black’s Law Dictionary, yet all of 193 member states of the United Nations have till date failed to come to a single, unanimous legal definition. There has been piecemeal growth of several categories of semantics on terror/terrorism. Thus, “terror is extreme fear; one or more violent acts that cause extreme fear” and “terrorism’s use or threat of violence to intimidate as a means of achieving political ends”. Then there is “agri-terrorism to disrupt/destroy a country food supply”, “bio-terrorism to intentional release of harmful biological agents, such as bacteria or viruses” (like the Chinese-origin Covid-19), “cyber-terrorism, domestic terrorism, eco-terrorism, international terrorism, lone wolf terrorism, narco-terrorism, paper terrorism, state-sponsored terrorism, state terrorism”.

Which of these now stands as the most deadly, destructive and demonic? Undoubtedly, it is “bio-terrorism”, which stands at the top, like nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction. “Bio-terrorism”, if not stamped out in good time, will inevitably lead to the next stage of “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD) “intended to kill human beings, without discriminating between combatants and non-combatants, on a massive scale”. And apart from nuclear weapons, “the most frequently cited example is chemical weapons”.

The use of chemical weapons could be a prelude to “chemical and biological warfare” (CBW) and the resultant WMD. In fact, the way things are moving across the world, as discontentment, race, ethnic and religious hatred are spreading from South America to Asia and the Middle East, the jihadi protagonists of conventional terrorism could broaden their recruitment pool by including highly educated and qualified techies, doctors, scientists and laboratory specialists to inflict mass destruction on as astronomical scale.

The base of terror/terrorism is likely to become more secret and thus more difficult to detect, identify and abort in its embryonic state. Any failure to go in for a pre-emptive strike at the root is likely to be more harmful for society and the State at large. The Red Fort terror plot must be seen in this light.

The anti-terrorism strategy of the State needs to undergo a fundamental change: from reactive to pro-active. The standard procedure is to investigate fatalities in attacks that have already taken place. But it is infinitely preferable to develop sources of intelligence to detect attacks before they have taken place.

The Red Fort mayhem calls for a fresh look and a re-orienting of the entire spectrum of the security scenario. India is the most populous state of the world. Chemical warfare is a dangerously silent, invisible and undetected form of attack, with a capacity to inflict incalculable harm on unsuspecting people.

The terrorist attacks of 1993 and 2008 -- both in Mumbai – were a demonstration of how modern warfare could be waged far from the international border in densely-populated urban India. The Red Fort attack only underlines this threat, which can come silent and undetected, and lead to mass killings. November 10, 2025 is a wake-up call – one that we can ignore only at our peril.

It’s high time for India to revisit and reorient its entire anti-terrorism strategic planning and draw up detailed defensive and offensive methods to tackle chemical and biological terror, with the help of techies, scientists and other specialists. This kind of warfare cannot be fought by the existing lower-rung and middle-level police system as science and technology-based terror must be handled by experts. Chemical and biological warfare and terror can be waged at an entirely different level. The command-and-control systems, along with intelligence, communications and coordination, must be placed in charge of officers who are empowered to cut through bureaucratic and other bottlenecks and have access to the highest authorities. The buck stops at the highest political office of the State, not with low-level functionaries like SHOs.

Unlike in the earlier attacks in Mumbai, people perished within minutes in the Red Fort strike of November 10. India is largely unprepared for these new forms of terror, especially involving chemical and biological attacks. The preparedness level in our cities must see a sea change, and the police and emergency services reoriented to face these new threats.

The writer is a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, London. The views expressed here are personal.