Representative image of NSG commandos.
Credit: PTI File Photo
The suicide bombing near Red Fort in Delhi on November 10, 2025, which, according to the government officials, claimed at least 13 lives (10 civilians and the suicide bomber) and injured nearly 30, was a stark reminder of India’s vulnerabilities, despite the tremendous gains the country has made against terrorism. In the wake of high-casualty attacks, the knee-jerk response has long tended to whip up hysteria about “rising terrorism”, about intelligence failures and about the fragility of India’s internal security architecture. It is important, consequently, to remind ourselves about the broad trajectory of terrorism in India.
Trajectory of terror
At peak, in 2001, India recorded 5,504 fatalities connected with the multiple terrorist attacks and insurgent movements across the country, including 4,011 in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) alone, and another 55 in attacks by Islamists outside J&K – the last two categories most relevant in the present context. 619 persons have been killed in these conflicts across India in 2025, but crucially, just 91 of these fatalities occurred in J&K, and just one in an Islamist terrorist attack outside J&K (before the blast in Delhi). A total of 626 were killed in 2024, with 127 fatalities in J&K, and none outside. In the decade between 2015 and 2024, six years have recorded zero Islamist terrorist-linked fatalities outside J&K. In the worst year for such fatalities, 2008, there were 39 incidents and 362 fatalities, virtually across the country, outside J&K.
Not that the terrorists did not try to attack. 82 persons were arrested for various Islamist terrorist conspiracies in 2025, not including the conspiracy that culminated in the Red Fort incident, in which arrests are still ongoing, and another 80 persons were arrested for such plots in 2024. These arrests indicate that police and intelligence agencies prevented scores of potential terrorist incidents.
The unravelling of the ricin plot in Ahmedabad, with the arrest of China-trained doctor Ahmed Mohiuddin Abdul Qader Jilani, underlines both an intelligence success and, at the same time, an exponential escalation of potential risk, as terrorists explore more lethal technologies, including bioweapons – perhaps the deadliest of future perils.
Enduring vulnerabilities
It is significant and disturbing, nevertheless, that neither the Red Fort nor the ricin conspiracy was uncovered during its early stages. The ricin plot was discovered due to inputs provided by a single informant, and the Red Fort–Faridabad cell conspiracy was discovered because of the relentless pursuit of a relatively minor offence – the pasting of posters purportedly of the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) at Nowgam in Srinagar – and the linkages it exposed. Preliminary investigations have reportedly determined that the Red Fort–Faridabad Cell had roots that go back to at least 2021, when Muzammil Tantray of the Ansar Ghazwat ul Hind, who was killed that year, handed over a cache of weapons to Moulvi Irfan Ahmed Wagay, the man who initiated the pasting of posters in Nowgam, and who eventually exposed the chain of conspirators leading up to the Faridabad cache of explosives. These linkages and Wagay’s activities were not discovered till the police investigation into the inflammatory posters at Nowgam, nor was anything known about Jilani’s tryst with ricin before an informer tipped off the police in Ahmedabad.
Ajai Sahni
Despite the cumulative successes against Islamist terrorism, it is clear that there are systemic weaknesses that have allowed threats of long duration to persist, consequences, variously, of patterns of underfunded intelligence, lacunae in and the politicisation of law enforcement and an anti-radicalisation framework that is more rhetorical than remedial. The Delhi bomber's undated video, circulated post-facto, rehearsing justifications for a “martyrdom operation”, demonstrates the persistence of radicalisation vectors that are being missed by the establishment. Past successes do not obviate the necessity of dramatic strengthening of the intelligence and de-radicalisation apparatus, to create a system grounded in data, unsparing in its internal critique, and urgent in its implementation.
Despite significant improvements in and integration of intelligence, the Multi-Agency Centre (MAC), the national fusion hub since 2001, the flow of actionable intelligence to all stakeholders remains limited due to traditional ‘stovepipe’ structures, turf wars and archaic tech stacks – legacy systems incompatible with contemporary AI-driven analytics. Intelligence agencies have severely limited human resources, and expansion plans of the Intelligence Bureau, for instance, sanctioned as far back as in 2009, are yet to reach fruition. The National Investigation Agency (NIA), established in 2008, after the devastating Mumbai carnage of November 26, 2008, had notched up 625 convictions by March 12, 2025, and boasts a 95.54% conviction rate – extraordinary given the evidentiary hurdles that plague terrorism prosecutions — but its 1,360 personnel (with another 541 posts vacant) are stretched across over 677 cases, even as its mandate has been extended beyond terrorism to comprehend a range of other ‘threats to national security’. The police-population ratio in the country, at 154.96 per 100,000, remains severely inadequate by international standards, and is mired in colonial-era protocols, with a tiny fraction of personnel trained and deployed for counter-terrorism intelligence gathering and enforcement.
National security imperatives
A dramatic expansion of capacities and capabilities has long been overdue, and we must not be misled by the relative decline in the incidence of terrorism to believe that we have won this ‘war’. Indeed, given the fraught geopolitical environment, particularly in the South Asian region, India’s growing international isolation, and the failure to invest adequately in defence and technology, can only tempt Pakistan to escalate its flickering proxy war.
While enforcement and intelligence have introduced discrete elements of contemporary technologies into their systems, governance in India, including internal security and defence administration, remains relatively primitive – structurally, technologically and crucially, psychologically.
National responses to terrorism also continue to be undermined by false assessments of the purportedly deterrent impact of fitful retaliation against Pakistan – surgical strikes, the Balakot bombing and Operation Sindoor; by the myth-making around the impact of the ‘abrogation’ of Article 370; boasts about ‘zero terrorism’ and development in J&K; and the cynical harnessing of a polarising communal politics for partisan electoral dominance.
The assessment of the challenges confronting the nation must be reality-based, as must be our estimates of the resources required for a comprehensive and strategic response. The Delhi bombing and thwarted ricin plot are twin mirrors: one reflecting averted catastrophe, the other, residual threat and structural vulnerabilities.
(The writer is the Executive Director of the Institute for Conflict Management and South Asia Terrorism Portal)