Attack in India

[Gauracandra]

Jan. 22 — Four policemen were killed and nine injured as unidentified gunmen on motorcycles opened fire outside the U.S. Information Agency office on Tuesday morning, police said. No U.S. officials were hurt in the attack, a spokesman said, but no other details were immediately available.

“NOTHING HAPPENED inside the center,” Gordon Duguid, a press attaché at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, told Reuters. “We are waiting for the Calcutta police to provide us with more details.”

 

The incident occurred at around 6:15 a.m. (7:45 p.m. ET) outside the well-guarded center, located on one of the busiest streets of Calcutta city in eastern India.

 

Security outside American establishments throughout the country has been tightened since the deadly air attacks on the United States in September.

[atma]

 

When I heard about this incident I really saw everything in my mind. How many times I walked through this place in Calcutta? Almost every day. I went inside the American Center many times because they got a good collection of books.

 

One of my friends that was in Calcutta 2 years ago called me to asked me if we walked in front of that building. Of course we did and I reminded her of her comments about the policemen in duty there. With all due respect to the dead policemen in this attack, you couldn't refrain yourself of making fun how the police guarded the place. They had at least 25 policemen there, all sitting confortably in chairs, most of them under a tree, drinking chai and playing cards. They were quite friendly, always saying 'Hare Krishna' to us.

I found this report in the Calcutta Telegraph:

 

WHEN IT’S TIME TO SHOOT, SCOOT

BY A STAFF REPORTER

 

Calcutta. Jan. 23:

A day after the terrorist strike outside the American Center, investigators solved the mystery why no shot was fired in resistance by policemen on duty, and wished it had not learnt the ugly truth.

 

Police commissioner Sujoy Chakraborty was shaken when he came to know while conducting a review that his officers carrying firearms and on duty at the spot had actually bolted from the scene when the assailants opened fire.

 

“I’m ashamed that not a single shot was fired in retaliation. This absence of counter-response has given us a bad name,” said Chakraborty at a meeting that was called to reconstruct the crime and assess the quality of action of the policemen on duty at the centre.

 

No matter how hard chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, also overseeing police affairs, tried in public to defend the force in the past 48 hours, the revelation that the police officers carrying arms had actually exposed unarmed constables to the vicious attack, forsaking the oath they had taken at the time of joining the service to stand by their men in all situations.

 

In private, Bhattacharjee exploded at the scandalous and cowardly dereliction of duty by the officers and sought an explanation from the police top brass as to why there had been no retaliation, officials said.

 

Of the 64 personnel on the scene, two were inspectors and four sub-inspectors who had revolvers in their belts. About 16 constables had rifles, but unlike the .303s, these guns are always loaded and just needed putting off the safety catch.

 

Instead of drawing their weapons, the officers ducked and then moved out of harm’s way, leaving their men, some of whom were unarmed, to fend for themselves.

 

Another shocking revelation was that a sergeant sitting in the cabin of the radio flying squad van, ironically codenamed Tiger, did not order his driver to chase the assailants. “The six men in the van did not do so out of fear,” the police chief was informed.

 

The same sergeant, however, gave a detailed account of how he and his men were within striking distance of the assailants in the FIR he lodged later.

 

He and his men had seen the whole incident from the secure confines of the police vehicle but were frozen into inaction. The Tiger turned into a meek deer when the motorbike-borne terrorists, apprehending that the policemen in this vehicle might do something, fired some shots at it before turning into Middleton Street. The shots had the desired effect. The policemen turned around and sped off in the other direction.

 

Yet another inglorious act was by the officer who was supposed to oversee the switch in shifts of policemen at the centre. The armed officer got off a taxi at the Park Street-Chowringhee crossing — he did not ride up to the centre to save money — and began to walk towards his destination a few hundred metres away when he heard the shots ring out. He dived into the safety of a car park of a multi-storeyed building he was going past.

 

When the administration sought an explanation from him, his reply to his superior was: “Boss, you must be knowing, with a wife and kids, who would want to invite trouble? I understood what was happening when I heard the shots. So I took the precaution.”

 

No less scandalous was the role of the two officers, one in charge of the incoming shift and the other of the outgoing. The first came in late, while the other had left early. “We are investigating everything and everybody,” a senior official said.

 

 

 

[valaya]

Ah yes, America defends the free world but who defends America? From the tone of some previous posts on this forum, apparently not even some `Americans`...