Our rickety, slipshod approach to bringing terrorists to book so emboldens them that nearly 200 more people lost their lives in serial bombings in Mumbai last month. If we count the dead in all the other acts of terror in India since 1993 we are talking of a death toll of thousands. What hope is there that things will change when Parliament finds more time to discuss Natwar Singh’s disgraceful rantings and Israel’s war on Lebanon rather than this undeclared war on India? What hope is there that we will be able to prevent the sort of mass murder that was planned on flights out of London last week if, God forbid, the evil men we fight were to think of a similar plan for flights out of Delhi or Mumbai? Meanwhile, would it be too much to ask that Justice P D Kode take less than two months to read his judgement in the 1993 bomb blasts case? Why does he need two months?