The Hindu : National : Security heightened at airports

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Aug 11, 2006

National

National

Security heightened at airports

Visitors banned as an emergency measure

— Photo: V. Sudershan

ON GUARD: Security on high alert at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi following the foiling of a terrorist plot in the United Kingdom on Thursday.

NEW DELHI: Security has been stepped up at airports across the country on Thursday following the attempt by terrorists to blow up planes in flight from the United Kingdom to the United States.

Concerned about the new ways that terrorists might adopt, Union Home Secretary V.K. Duggal held a high-level meeting with top security officials and asked them to take steps to meet the new security challenges in the aviation sector.

Mr. Duggal is reported to have asked security agencies, including the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security and the Central Industrial Security Force, to study the manner in which the explosives were to be smuggled into the aircraft at London's Heathrow airport.

Union Minister for Civil Aviation Praful Patel told the media that security at airports had already been tightened in the wake of the July 11 Mumbai bomb blasts, and in the run-up to Independence Day.

On high alert

Identified as a sensitive airport by intelligence agencies, the Delhi airport has been on high alert for the past one month.

The ban on visitors entering the airport would continue.

"All bus shelters, railway stations and airports have been put on high alert in the run-up to Independence Day. Entry to visitors has been banned. The secondary checking done by the airlines which was started earlier is continuing. Security agencies are also doing selective profiling," said an official at the airport.

Delhi airport has virtually been turned into a fortress, with light-machine gun-mounted mobile jeeps patrolling the "city-side", the operational term for non-operational areas.

Surveillance has been stepped up at parking lots and ticket counters.

"The percentage of manual checking has now gone up to 100 per cent as against 10 per cent earlier. The secondary checks are done especially in America-bound flights," said an official.

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