The Hindu : Tight security at Red Fort

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Aug 16, 2003

National

National

Tight security at Red Fort

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI AUG. 15. With militants increasingly donning police or Army uniforms while carrying out attacks, the security agencies concerned with arrangements for the Independence Day ceremony here today ensured that no personnel — including senior officers — were allowed entry to the Red Fort without proper verification and checks.

"The screening of personnel themselves has been very extensive today. It is only after proper verification of identity cards that we were allowed to pass through the security cordon,'' said a security personnel posted in the Press enclosure, a stone's throw from the ramparts of the Red Fort from where the Prime Minister addressed the nation.

The security was not restricted to screening of visitors alone. The Dog Squad and the Bomb Disposal Squad carried out checks for explosives at the venue. Also, vehicles coming in were screened at different points.

The checking began right at Delhi's borders, where security personnel standing with umbrellas since 1 a.m. made occupants of vehicles wait as they searched for suspicious objects. And while vehicles without valid stickers for the Red Fort function were not allowed beyond places such as Laxmi Nagar in East Delhi, pickets were also set up on strategic locations such as all the bridges over the Yamuna for checking incoming vehicles.

The security was more intense than in previous years and additional pickets could be seen.

Also, while police commandos and personnel lined the routes leading to the Red Fort, sandbag bunkers were seen for the first time behind the Red Fort. It is another matter though that most of them lay vacant due to the rain as the policemen preferred standing in covered areas.

An intriguing aspect of the security checks today was that at every level the personnel carried out their job with equal zeal and did not take it for granted that the vehicle coming in with a parking sticker had been screened at previous pickets.

During the function, airspace restrictions were in force and the movement of trains and buses in and out of the Capital were also restricted and traffic diversion remained in force. While air-patrolling with helicopters was not possible due to rain, the anti-aircraft batteries installed at various locations around the Red Fort maintained strict vigil.

The heightened vigil, however, also meant inconvenience to commuters, especially those required to report for duty in connection with Independence Day. A technologist of G.B. Pant Hospital, Sushil Kumar, who was to report for special duty at 6 a.m., was seen pleading with unrelenting traffic police personnel at Laxmi Nagar to allow him to go through.

"I have been standing here since 5-30 a.m. and they are just not allowing me or this nurse on emergency duty to go," Mr. Kumar said, adding that his appeals to the traffic officer had fallen on deaf ears even after he had shown his identity card and office circular.

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