New Ways Needed To Tackle Terrorists: Indian Home Minister Chidambaram

PUNE (INDIA) (NNN-TNN) -- Indian home minister P Chidambaram has said it is critical for the security forces to keep devising newer ways of outsmarting terrorists and extremist elements, who are adept at using improvised explosive devices (IEDs) as "the most potent instrument" for spreading terror.

"The terror strikes in Pune, Mumbai, the Delhi high court and the most recent one on the vehicle carrying an Israeli diplomat's wife are all cases of use of IEDs," he said at the inaugural function of the Institute of IED Management (IIM) at the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) camp in Talegaon, 35 km from here, off the old Pune-Mumbai highway, on Thursday.

Chidambaram said, "The IEDs can be disguised as any other article. These devices can be put in a toy, a bicycle, a motorcyle or a bag. Our adversaries are as intelligent or, at times, even more than our security forces. They keep inventing newer ways of fighting us."

"It is in this context that the security forces need to keep devising newer ways of outsmarting our adversaries and this can be achieved through apt capacity building," he said.

The IIM at Talegaon camp is the third of the six training schools, which are being established by the CRPF at different locations across the country for capacity building and training of human resource. "We will have more such CRPF schools soon," the home minister said.

He said, "Our lack of capacity to combat terrorism was exposed during the series of bomb blasts that occurred across the country between 2001 and 2008, culminating in the 26/11 terror strikes in Mumbai. "In the last three years, the government has applied a major focus on capacity addition," he said.

A fortnight ago, Chidambaram inaugurated the first-ever CRPF intelligence school at Kadarpur near Gurgaon, which will enable the country's largest para-military force to work on intelligence gathering of its own. Prior to this, a dog breeding and training school was established at the CRPF base at Taralu near Bangalore.

"We will soon have a Rapid Action Force (RAF) training school at Meerut; a CRPF training of trainers schools in Shimla and the college of insurgency and jungle craft at Belgaum in Karnataka," Chidambaram said. "What the new institute here (Talegaon) means that we still have a long way to go in terms of securing an apt capacity for our internal security architecture," he added.

Chidambaram identified a three-stage road map to strengthening the internal security apparatus. "First, we need human resource right from the level of constables to officers and leaders. Then we need to train this human resource to become as good as the commandoes from the US navy seals or Israel, Germany and France. At the third level, we need induction of new technologies to combat terrorism. A combined effect of all these three steps will lead to a better internal security architecture."

Earlier, chief minister Prithviraj Chavan, who presided over the function, said that the IIM is a very crucial addition of training facility not only for the para-military and the security forces, but will also benefit the state police force.

"The left-wing extremists and separatist elements in north east India and Jammu and Kashmir have killed many of our security forces people by way of deploying IEDs. Maharashtra too is facing the problem of left-wing extremism in Gadchiroli as 23 security personnel have been killed between 2009 and 2011 as a result of IEDs," he said.

"A scientific management of these devices through training and improved fighting capabilities is essential in the fight against terror," Chavan said.

The CRPF's additional director general (operations), P M Nair, said that 80% of the 26 security personnel killed so far this year, were victims of IED landmines. "The new institute will not only prepare 100 master trainers this year, but will also prepare 300 trainers of trainers through batches of 50 personnel for each course of six month duration," he said.

Director general of CRPF K Vijay Kumar, senior officials S S Dogra, V S Gujral and Jamal Khan, College of Military Engineering's Colonel N K Verma, officials from the army southern command; defence research and development organisation; Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay; Military Intelligence and ordinance factories were present. -- NNN-TNN