Security agencies facing threat from IED menace that claimed 75 lives in the country last year are still “groping” to obtain suitable equipment to detect their presence or disrupt their triggering mechanisms, a top security official said on Wednesday. “There have been many claims on what technology is available for these Improvised Explosive Devices threats...What they (technology) can do and cannot do. But the industry has not been able to give the forces suitable equipments and neither the technology to combat these....We are still groping (in this regard),” NSG Director General J N Choudhury said during a counter-IED conference organised by the paramilitary.
The NSG is the national repository for analysis of all types of bomb blasts and attacks carried out by IEDs. Flagging the issue of regulating the sale and distribution of detonators, Chaudhary said, “All IED blasts that occurred last year in the country were conducted by the use of electronic detonators. It is desirable to restrict and regulate their use. It is not possible to have a blanket ban on its usage as it is used in mining but there has to be a federal policy on this.”
He said the legal regime to regulate usage of electronic detonators needs to be made more “rigorous.” The NSG chief rued that a number of State police forces do not have the “basic equipment” to counter IEDs. India, however, witnessed a decline in the number of IED blast-related fatalities last year as during 2014, 75 people were killed in 190 such incidents, while in 2013 these numbers stood at 130 killed in 112 incidents. IEDs remain a “weapon of choice” for elements like Naxals, extremists and terrorists to perpetrate violence, Choudhury added.