On May 25 an explosion was reported outside the Delhi High Court in the scorching heat of the afternoon. It led to terror and fear amongst the people and without delay authorities set off high alert in the capital and tighten the security at public places. This has been the scene after every blast. Fortunately, no one was injured. May 25 blast was the second in the preceding eight months that happened on September 19, 2010. Many security measures were taken and made sure that further no such explosions would take place.

The newly unveiled U.S. Nuclear Posture Review focuses on five key objectives; one of them is preventing nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism. The report underscores nuclear terrorism as ‘today’s most immediate and extreme danger.”

What is Nuclear Terrorism and how serious is the threat? Is it an overrated nightmare? Some facts here:

Three names have been doing the rounds in India these days: Maulana Ilyas Kashmiri, David Coleman Headley (a.k.a Dauod Geelani) and Tahawur Hussein Rana; one hard core veteran Jehadi and two motivated ‘would be’ terrorists. They are in the news for plotting major assaults in India. Among them, Ilyas Kashmiri who was rumored to be dead early this year, in fact survived three drone attacks in Pakistan’s Waziristan region, belongs to the Al Qaeda- Harkat-Ul- Jihad- Al-Islami (HuJI) lineage and heads Al Qaeda’s deadly 311 brigade. He still carries a head money of US $ 600,000 dollars.

Of late, the menace of computer ‘hacking’ has become a punishable offense when it compromises national security. Of course not all acts of hacking will be amounting to terrorism, and sometime used as a tool for pranks or profit. This could be regarded as terrorist action only if the hacking is designed to disrupt government’s activities, or to advance anti- national causes, or to intimidate its citizens. Either a threat or real use of it, is a potential act of terrorism, or rather can be regarded as cyber-crime or cyber-terrorism in a broader context.

The Government of Bangladesh has recently accepted India’s proposal to set up a Joint Task Force to deal with militancy and other anti-national elements. However, modalities of the Task Force are yet to be decided. As of now, India will be assisting Bangladesh with intelligence inputs only without any direct involvement in any joint military operations to flush out militants taking shelter in Bangladesh.

Once again Indian cities are under terrorist radar and vulnerable to lethal attacks. In a matter of 24-hours two big cities -Bangalore, in the south and Ahmadabad, in the western part of the country were targeted. This shows the entrenched capability of the terrorists to carry out attacks on the urban centers and create mayhem by killing innocent people.