IISc and Church Street attack on December 28: Just a coincidence

The blast at Bangalore today brought out an eerie coincidence. It was the year 2005 December 28th when Bangalore witnessed a major attack at the Indian Institute of Sciences or the IISc. [Follow updates about developments after Church Street attack]

This brings us to the question whether there is something to do with the date and whether today's attack was timed with the IISc attack anniversary? The only similarity between the two attacks is the date.

Could it be connected?

The attack on the IISc that was carried out by the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) resulting in the death of a professor and injury to four others. It had trained a set of Fidayeens to strike at IISc. The question is that whether the LeT will waste an opportunity in a city like Bengaluru to carry out a low-intensity blast?

Hence the more one looks at it one gets the impression that there was no connection between the two attacks. Moreover if you read through the confession statement of Sababuddin Ahmed one of the accused in the IISc attack he makes it clear that the Lashkar does not like small attacks.

He goes on to state that the IISc attack was a failure and the handlers in Pakistan was seething with rage. I was told that we cannot afford to waste money and the operation ought to have been a success.

Did the dates coincide intentionally?

It could well be a care of sheer coincidence. However terrorists are known to add some effects in their attacks. There is also a good chance that whoever carried out this attack ensured that it coincided with the IISC attack.

However looking closely at Sunday's attack it does not appear to be connected at all. However this is what the preliminary stage of the investigation would suggest.

Security was asleep:

The more interesting point to note here is that the attack was carried out on Sunday for various reasons. The security has generally been on the higher side after the arrest of Mehdi Masroor Biswas.

However on Sunday security is normally bad and this could have been taken advantage of by the person who planted the bomb. The other point to be noted here is that Church Street where the attack took place is crowded at any given time. However on Sunday the street at times is difficult to walk on.

This is what may have impressed the terrorist who decided to plant the bomb an hour before it exploded. This only goes on to show how a bag with the bomb was lying without none even noticing it for an hour. This shows the kind of crowd there is on Church Street during the week ends.