AA Edit | Avoidable Tragedy in Nowgam

The explosion at the Nowgam police station in Srinagar in which nine lives were lost and 32 personnel injured betrays how amateurish the handling of deadly explosives was despite knowing what damage some of the same material may have caused in the car blast near the Red Fort in Delhi.

It is worrying enough that there is a menacing infiltration of fanaticism in professional people like doctors and their accomplices. The careless response of official India in storing seized explosives seized from them in an open space near a police station further clouds an environment already reeking of the threat of terrorism.

With what face can officialdom explain to the kin of the deceased how an investigating team of forensic experts, revenue officials, members of the police force, forensic photographers and a tailor, was lost due to reckless neglect? How tragic that the risks technical people must take in their line of work should be tossed away in this manner.

It is risible that official India tried to explain it by saying standard operating procedures were followed in handling volatile explosives. Maybe, their SOPs should consider fundamental risks in handling explosives and include silos to safely store them or leave them in the custody of the army’s ordnance division. Also, how about directing that hazmat suits must be worn for such risky tasks?

The toll from the accident was close enough to the 13 lives lost in the worst terror incident in a metropolis in a decade. The blast in Delhi itself represented a counterterrorism failure after the security forces had nabbed the main conspirators and seized a phenomenal amount of explosives. The deadly stash could have done immeasurable damage had the assembling of multiple car bombs in a nationwide terror plot not been nipped in the bud.

Proud as we are of the security forces having cracked a huge conspiracy, we know that their task is a never-ending one that is further exacerbated by the spread of radicalism even as more fronts seem to be opening after the regime change in Bangladesh. The only solution is constant vigil which must now be more widespread than before and not focused just on domestic terrorists getting cues from Pakistan.