Newindpress
Bangalore, Jul 9: The Indian Government had been cautioned as early as 1993 by the Israeli authorities that South India, Bangalore in particular, was attracting radical students from West Asia, who had the potential of becoming terrorists.
Speaking to this website's newspaper from Chennai, Retired Additional Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat, GOI B Raman, who is also a security analyst, said that Israeli authorities had arrested a Palestinan student from Bangalore in 1993 and recovered an IED (improvised explosive device) from him.
„But our Government chose not to go ahead with any kind of screening because of the sensitive nature of the issue. There was a lot of resistance to the idea as any mention of a background check of students coming from West Asia would lead to fears of profiling” Raman says.
The Israelis, according to him, even offered the Indians a chance to interrogate the Palestinian and obtain more information, but the Indian Government desisted from doing so.
Even the Egyptian authorities had cautioned that radical students who were denied admission to Arab universities had managed to get admission to Indian universities without the GOI being aware of their extremist background.
Raman, who is the Director of Topical Studies in Chennai, says that conducting such enquiries is always politically influenced and has therefore not received proper attention.
„Screening of people joining educational institutions is a delicate issue. If it is restricted to people coming from a particular place, it can lead to problems politically, so the Government chose not to act on it.”
Raman also says that antagonism about American and UK policies in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia has drawn upper class and highly educated Muslims to wage war against these countries. Raman also warned that there was a strong possibility of an attack on institutions belonging to countries like US and UK on Indian soil.
Follow-up stories