Bomb Hoax in Pune

India has no doubt one of the most craziest people in the world. Just a few days back one person walking on Pune roads saw two young men riding on a bike dropping a packet on the sides of the road. The bike apparently did not have a license plate. Cautious due to recent bomb blast modus operandi of the terrorist, he alerted the police. They in turn called the anti-terrorist squad(ATS). The story is normal till this point.

In most of the Hollywood movies we have seen this hundred times that one of the bad fellas or a cop fires gun and the crowd in the public place starts running around, scared to get killed. We never thought this is wrong. This is normal human reaction.

But here is what sets India apart from the rest of the world. When the Bomb Difusal guys arrived at the scene in Pune, instead of running away from the place to save their lives, there was a huge crowd to see how they guys defuse the bomb. Really… this is not a fantasy. People actually did not think twice before gathering at that place. Have you ever seen such people elsewhere?

However, as the mob expected the so called bomb turned out to be leftovers from some student’s kitchen.

Terrorism is plane ineffective in India

I just came across the chronological list of bomb blasts in India on NDTV. I am just summarizing this table here adding columns for people killed and injured.

Now if you see the other news that hit us from Jodhpur was about the stampede in the temple. This whole messy management killed 147 people and 55 injured. The one before that was the Naina Devi Temple Stampede. In this a total of 162 people were killed.

This was not restricted to Temples. The infamous Sari Stampede in Lucknow killed 22 women.

Compare all this with the terrorist attacks and you will find that all that labor and intelligence, secrecy, funds behind the blasts are simply ineffective. Except for the Mumbai train blasts, none of the other instances have been close to the temple stampedes. Such is the state of discipline, crowd management in this country. Despite all this, people will still flock the temples on specific days putting huge pressure on administration.

So when such incidents marginalize the impact of terrorism in this country, I do not understand why these guys are spending so much of their energy in such useless stuff.

Date Incident Killed Injured
September 27, 2008 Blast in Delhi’s Mehrauli flower market killed 1 and injured 23. 1 23
September 13, 2008 Serial blasts in Delhi killed at least 24 people and injured more than 100. 24 100+
July 26, 2008 Serial blasts in Ahmedabad killing at least 30 people and injuring more than 100. 30 100+
July 25, 2008 Nine explosions in Bangalore create terror killing two people and injuring twelve. 2 12
May-08 Eight serial blasts rock Jaipur in a span of 12 minutes leaving 65 dead and over 150 injured. 65 150
Jan-08 Terrorist attack on CRPF camp in Rampur kills 8. 8  
Oct-07 2 killed in a blast inside Ajmer Sharif shrine during Ramadan. 2  
Aug-07 30 dead, 60 hurt in Hyderabad ‘terror’ strike. 30 60
May-07 A bomb at Mecca mosque in Hyderabad kills 11 people. 11  
February 19, 2007 Two bombs explode aboard a train bound from India to Pakistan, burning to death at least 66 passengers, most of them Pakistanis. 66  
Sep-06 30 dead and 100 hurt in twin blasts at a mosque in Malegaon. 30 100
Jul-06 Seven bombs on Mumbai’s trains kill over 200 and injure 700 others. 200 700
Mar-06 Twin bombings at a train station and a temple in Varanasi kill 20 people. 20