Terrorism: Special police teams to be formed

By Our Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD, FEB. 22. The State Government which has waken up to the reality of the threat posed by terrorism with the spurt in bomb blast cases is forming two new cells in the Special Branch of the Police Department to deal exclusively with such cases and to augment intelligence network in this direction.

Announcing this at a press conference here today, Mr. T. Devender Goud, Home Minister, said that the special teams, one exclusively to deal with the city and the other for the entire State, would be trained with the help of the Centre to arm them with the necessary information.

A high-level meeting decided to direct efforts towards interacting with other States in this regard. The Government had received information that Hyderabad would be one of the targets of ISI functionaries in the near future. The Minister said that the involvement of one or more groups was not ruled out in the recent six incidents.

The first one was the murder of Devender in the Saidabad area on November 25 and the other five incidents, including Monday's pipe bomb blast in Secunderabad, had altered the face of policing the State, he said.

Referring to modernisation of weaponry, the Minister said that the Centre had released Rs. 10 crores for arming the anti- extremist force with special equipment. He said he had visited the encounter site in Visakhapatnam where seven APSP men were killed when PWG naxalites raided their camp and found that some grenades did not function. An inquiry had been ordered into non- functioning of weapons, he said.

No breakthrough in blast case

Meanwhile forensic experts confirmed the use of a fuse wire in detonating the ``pipe bomb'' in the premises of the Venkataraghava Nursing Home in Maredpally. The examination of the remnants found at the blast site proved use of gelatin, a high explosive, the Commissioner of Police, Mr. S. R. Sukumara, disclosed here.

Talking to mediapersons, Mr. Sukumara said bomb experts of the A.P. Forensic Science Laboratory (APFSL) felt that the assailant could have lit the fuse wire before running away from the hospital premises. The Commissioner explained that the fuse wire would burn at the rate of one centimetre per second and it was possible that at least 20 centimetres of fuse wire could have been used.

This would have given the person a time of 20 seconds to run away after lighting the fuse. However, the scene of the blast did not indicate any burnt marks of the fuse wire on the cemented ground in the portico. It was not yet clear as to who could have planted the bomb.

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Section  : Regional
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