Pulwama Attack- Big Intelligence Failure

The Pulwama attack is the outcome of a serious crisis in intelligence gathering. With the simmering resentment in Kashmir, security agencies are finding it hard to obtain.

- Namrata Biji Ahuja

Sukhjit Kaur of Moga in Punjab is bereaved. But she also feels she is lucky.

Her husband, Havildar Jaimal Singh, was one of 2,547 Central Reserve Police Force personnel who began a fateful journey from Jammu to Srinagar at 3.30pm on February 14. A Jaish-e-Mohammad fidayeen driving a vehicle laden with explosives ensured that their 78-vehicle convoy was brutally halted.

“I am lucky that I received the body of my husband,” said Sukhjit. “His was the only body that was intact, except that he had lost one arm and his face was burnt because of the blast. So many other bodies were unrecognisable. Many families got just mortal remains.”

The explosion, which shook Lethpora village in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pulwama district, left 40 men dead and many injured. Blood and body parts, mixed with dust and rubble and ash, marked the blast site.

Something had gone terribly wrong that afternoon. Sukhjit is looking for answers, and so are India’s security brass. How could a single suicide bomber inflict such horror on a region guarded by more than a lakh troopers from the Army, the CRPF, the Border Security Force and sundry other agencies?

Unlike what was initially believed, the blast was not triggered by the impact from the bomber ramming his vehicle into the fifth bus in the convoy. Bomb-disposal experts who scanned the site said a lot of sophisticated planning had gone into assembling the improvised explosive device (IED) that ripped through the convoy. Preliminary findings of the National Bomb Data Centre, which functions under the elite National Security Guard, have revealed that the IED had a switch that triggered the explosion.

The report, details of which were accessed by THE WEEK, says the explosives weighed between 80kg and 135kg. It was a mix of RDX and ammonium nitrate—a potent combination intended to inflict maximum damage.