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Home ministry fears sabotage over Kargil

Tara Shankar Sahay in New Delhi

The recent explosions in various parts of the country have indicated a "disturbing trend" and could point to links between some fundamentalists organisations and hostile external powers, say officials of the Union ministry of home affairs.

The officials said some wireless messages intercepted by the security forces, including the BSF, on the country's western borders with Pakistan, had revealed that the Inter Services Intelligence had been instructing its "contacts" in India to unleash disorder and mayhem through subversive activities.

Asked to comment on the government's view that there could be instances of internal sabotage and subversive activities soon after the Kargil operations began, the officials told this correspondent that the recent explosions in Jammu and Kashmir and the detection of explosives in various parts of South India "indicated such a trend".

It was, however, emphasised that the problem appears to involve not just one community but various communities to which political parties extend patronage. This was done in order to "wink" at questionable activities relating to religious fundamentalism and extremism which have a direct bearing on national security, they maintained.

"We are shocked and alarmed at how deep-rooted this malaise is," the officials pointed out, adding that they were monitoring which political parties have been aiding and abetting anti-national activities.

Significantly, a debate is raging on within the MHA to enact a law dealing with subversive and anti-national elements during times of war but it has been argued that such laws already exist. In this context, the officials referred to Gujarat where the district collectors of Kutch, Banaskantha, Patan, Porbandar, Junagadh and Jamnagar have been given special powers to arrest suspected anti-national elements under the National Security Act.

Gujarat is said to have extremely porous borders that enable anti-national elements to smuggle in huge amounts of RDX.

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