The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Caution over ‘relaxed’ attitude Law & order

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Oct 11, 2008
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Caution over ‘relaxed’ attitude Law & order

The police need to be constantly on their toes in spite of breakthroughs in major cases, writes Marri Ramu

The recent busting of the Indian Mujahideen terrorist module by the Mumbai police came as a big relief to their counterparts in Hyderabad. First, because the clueless twin blasts case that has become an acid test for investigative abilities of the city police has been disentangled with two of the alleged bombers being arrested along with18 others. Second, the fears of Hyderabad once again becoming a target of terrorists in the immediate future are gone, at least for now. < /p>

However, some senior police officers feel this ‘attitude of relaxation’ is a dangerous trend in policing. They cite several reasons for this. Best is the post-Mecca Masjid blast security scenario, they point out, stating that none expected that the terrorists would strike at Lumbini Park and Gokul Chat within three months of triggering an explosion in the Mecca Masjid.

New challenges

Similarly, it would be a mistake if law-enforcers relax even a bit on keeping surveillance on terrorist modules. If it was Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islami earlier, it is Indian Mujahideen now and tomorrow a new outfit might come up throwing new security challenges.

After the explosion in Mecca Masjid and the twin bomb blasts, police launched a massive security sensitization programme. But such an exercise cannot be abandoned midway once a terrorist module is busted. In fact, some lacunae that came to the fore while analysing the modus operandi of terrorists are yet to be set right. An example is the way of police handling vehicle theft cases. Terrorists started stealing vehicles and using them for carrying out attacks. They would fill the stolen vehicles with explosives and drive into targeted places. Investigation into earlier vehicle theft cases suggested that there is a big racket of getting stolen vehicles registered.

Till now, there is no clear-cut system of verifying if a vehicle being offered for sale is a stolen one. There is little or no networking between police and the Road Transport Authority officials concerned. If a vehicle is stolen in Adilabad and abandoned in Hyderabad, how do the city police know it is a stolen one?

Worried of being tracked by police if they used registered vehicles, terrorists began using stolen vehicles. But the police are yet to improve their database of stolen and abandoned vehicles. Cases in which suspicion of the possible collusion of RTA staff in re-registering stolen vehicles have not been taken to their logical end. All this only suggests that police have still a long way to go from security sensitization to strengthening intelligence gathering to improving upon investigation systems.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Andhra Pradesh