Our Bureau

Mumbai , July 12

The Mumbai police has formed 16 teams to track the terrorists who planted bombs on Mumbai's local trains on Tuesday. Officers with prior experience in bomb-blast investigations will lead these teams.

Persons giving authentic information on the whereabouts of these terrorists would be given a reward of Rs 25 lakhs, said Mr R R Patil, Maharashtra's Home Minister. He was addressing the Legislative Assembly on Wednesday.

Mr Patil said that it was physically impossible to frisk each and every person on the railway platform and so metal detectors would be installed at the stations and random checks would be carried out. The Mumbai Police did not have prior intelligence information about the blast, he said.

" The likelihood of an attack on the RSS Headquarters was known, eight months in advance, therefore we could kill the terrorist. But in the Mumbai local train blast, we did not have any prior information" Mr Patil said.

He said that security arrangements for the entire railway infrastructure was not adequate and that there was a need to further increase in the manpower of the police force. He assured the House that the Maharashtra Government was ready to take full responsibility of the security arrangement in local trains.

At present, Government, Railway Police and the Railway Protection Force man the security or the railways infrastructure. The Union Government is in charge of the Railway Protection Force.

Earlier in the day, opposition leaders of Shiv Sena-BJP demanded the resignation of Chief Minister, Mr Vilasrao Deshmukh, Deputy Chief Minister, Mr R R Patil, and the dismissal of Mumbai Police Chief, Mr A N Roy, for their failure to avert the blasts.

Leader of the opposition in the Legislative Assembly, Mr Ramdas Kadam said that Mr Deshmukh and Mr Patil should resign taking moral responsibility for the blasts.

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