The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Security guards have become easy targets for attackers

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Jul 22, 2006

Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Security guards have become easy targets for attackers

Nearly 30 guards have been murdered in the city during the past five years and many of these cases are yet to be solved, writes K.V. Subramanya

THE MURDER of a security guard at the warehouse of Lupin India, a pharmaceutical company on Mysore Road in the early hours of Thursday, has showed how the security guards have become sitting ducks for attackers.

Nearly 30 guards, most of them deployed by private security agencies, have been murdered in the city during the past five years and many of these cases, including the latest incident, are yet to be solved.

These incidents have showed that the private security agencies do not provide any weapons to their guards to defend themselves from possible attacks.

Some of these incidents have also brought out the fact that security agencies recruit aged and physically unfit people for the job.

In fact, Veerabhadrachari, who was murdered at Lupin India's warehouse, was aged 62. The two guards, Muniswamy and Ramaiah, who were killed at two branches of Jagadguru Sri Renukacharya College some time ago, were both aged around 60.

While one of them was hearing impaired, the other had impaired vision. According to the police, none of the murdered security guards had any weapons to protect themselves.

The general belief is that guards are posted at those places where valuables are kept. Criminals are prompted to attack such places; and the physically unfit and unarmed guards become the easy targets of criminals, the police say.

In 2005, B.H. Nagaraja and Manikanta, both of them guards, were found murdered while they were on duty at the Karnataka State Agro Corn Products Corporation Ltd. on Bellary Road in Sanjayanagar police station limits

C. Nagendra (25), who was deployed at a gymnasium at Ashwathnagar in Sanjayanagar police station limits, was bludgeoned to death in May 2005. Nagendra had joined a private security agency only nine days before he was murdered.

Ananda Rao (55), a security guard at a concrete pipe manufacturing industry in Devasandra industrial area in Mahadevapura police station limits, was hacked to death in January last.

The Kadugondanahalli police are yet to arrest the culprits who murdered Mansoor Alam (45), the security guard of East End Food Products on Nagavara Road on October 18, 2003, and made away with Rs. 1 lakh in cash from the factory.

The murder of a security guard of a leading garment store on Commercial Street, which took place in 2003, has also remained undetected.

However, in April 2002, the Upparpet police arrested a gang of eight Nepali Gorkhas on charges of murdering security guards of the Jagadguru Sri Renukacharya College, the Vasanthnagar post office, a computer education institute in Koramangala, and a gas cylinder company at Jalahalli.

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