The multiple bomb blasts that rocked Bangalore and Ahmedabad on 25-26 July have left scores of people dead and hundreds injured. People's Voice strongly condemns the perpetrators of these dastardly attacks. We share in the grief of the families of those killed or injured.

Immediately after the blasts, a disinformation campaign has been unleashed through the media as to who carried out these blasts and why. As in the past, the blasts have been declared the handiwork of various shadowy groups.

For the last several years, hundreds of people have been killed and thousands injured in terrorist attacks in different cities and towns of India. The most recent such attack was in Jaipur three months ago. Following every such strike, a similar story line appears in the news media, planted by government intelligence agencies, of the alleged involvement of Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Indian Muslims. Arrests and torture of innocent people follow. But years after the incidents, the state has still to prove anyone guilty of these crimes, let alone punish the guilty. It is the innocent who are punished. First, they fall victim to the terrorist attacks and to the overall climate of tension and fear that is created. Besides this, innocent people of the Muslim faith are invariably targeted by the police and the security agencies in the name of counter-terrorism. Every terrorist strike is used to deepen the divisions in society along communal lines, to paint the people of Muslim faith as the source of the violence and insecurity that plagues the lives of ordinary people in this society.

Immediately on the heels of the terrorist attacks in Ahmedabad, the political representatives of the ruling class have started raising their voices in support of stronger, more repressive laws such as POTA that had to be struck off the statute books some time back after it became clear how it was being used to persecute countless ordinary people.  It is clear that the ruling class of this country is headed on a dangerous course, determined to pursue its agenda of capitalist reforms and to become a big power in alliance with US imperialism. To pursue this agenda, it is bound to step up its measures to suppress the people, and to divide and disorient them. In these conditions, it cannot be ruled out that these terrorist strikes have been deliberately engineered with this nefarious plan in mind.