NEW DELHI, India: GK. Reddy, a respected columnist, wrote in The Hindu, “In Delhi’s bureaucratic jungle, security came to be treated as a holy cow, too sacrosanct to be criticised for its organization: adequacies, professional fixations of political blind spots”.
He said, The new security agencies were hampered from the very start by palace politics or too ‘much personal interference in the exercise of their overriding jurisdiction in all matters concerning the safety of the head of the government”.
The Time of India said it appeared the gunman had fired the first shots before the prayer meeting started. “If that is indeed the case, he acted as if he wanted to ‘warn the security men about his presence in the complex.”
The newspaper said, “If the shots did not alert them, then the government might as well as pack them off”.
Describing the incident as a “shameful lapse” the Hindustan Times continued, “It is absolutely unbelievable that an unmistable shot was heard in the vicinity where the President, the Prime Minister and other dignitaries were gathered and it was dismissed as a firecracker”.
Article extracted from this publication >> October 10, 1986
