During my recent visit to India with my family, we saw heightened security at hotels where we dined and at public places, such as shopping malls, however, up against a well organised force of heavily armed men, much of this would have been useless.

It is fair to say that the same would apply to hotels and public places such as railway stations in many large cities around the world.

During our visit, I made the comment to my wife that, with a veritable vipers nest of terrorism in the foothills of Afghanistan and another new regime in Pakistan which appears not to openly want to work with the US as Musharaf did to fight terrorism, India would be a logical target for extremists.

Unfortunately for the people of Mumbai and the thousands of visitors to this lovely city, I was proven right last week.

In undertaking such a focused attack targetting UK and US citizens, as well as Jewish ex-pats these vile scum wanted to hit out at the UK, America and Israel while also trying to destabilise the Indian economy.

A further goal was to probably heighten the tension between India and Pakistan, which might escalate into an open conflict. In the wake of these attacks, the new regime in Pakistan faces its first real test of diffusing a genuine international incident. For the sake of the many good and innocent people in both India and Pakistan, I hope that calm heads prevail, and that conflict is avoided, with Pakistan and India agreeing to work together to eradicate the terrorist threat.

Only a few months ago a massive car bomb in Islamabad at the Marriott Hotel killed 50 people and, although it was designed to kill foreigners, it slaughtered mainly Pakistani citizens doing their daily work. Clearly, collateral damage is easy to justify when you are killing for such a noble cause.

In terms of the people that perpetrated these acts of pure cowardice, in my book they rank alongside paedophiles and serial killers.

No amount of political, religious or nationalistic rhetoric can justify spraying bullets into a railway station, hospital or hotel. If this is killing in the name of, I am sure the higher power these acts were designed to appease would be disgusted.

These are not martyrs that will go to heaven, they are animals that will go straight to hell. Do these so called disenfranchised young men ever look into the eyes of their children or siblings and think of how they would feel if someone butchered their loved ones in the kind of barbaric acts they are planning?

I guess the answer is probably not, as they are too brainwashed to have any grip on reality or indeed humanity. As a Sikh, I am committed to my religion, but the thing I was aware of long before my religion was my humanity and the sense of right and wrong that differentiates me from animals.