Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Is the city ready to face Mumbai-type attacks?

HYDERABAD: As the frightening scenes of the Mumbai terror attacks unfolded on television screens on Wednesday night, one question that has been engaging the minds of both civilians and security planners in the State capital is whether Hyderabad is ready to handle such a situation.

Throughout the day, the police top brass engaged themselves in brainstorming sessions on this issue and the most disturbing consensus, though not stated officially, was that the city police were not geared at all to meet or tackle such an eventuality.

The capital had witnessed the most serious terror attacks in 2007 May and August when bombs went off in Mecca Masjid, Lumbini Park and Gokul Chat, respectively, taking a heavy toll of 55 people in all and wounding more than 100 citizens. Despite the terror acts pointing to the vulnerability of Hyderabad, police officers did not seem to put in place protocols to deal with such situations, much less having a well-trained and well-equipped Quick Reactions Teams (QRTs).

Beyond any doubt, it would be extremely difficult to prevent a premeditated terror attack, carried out especially by those who are prepared to die.

The ability to prevent a Mumbai-type strike is only possible through an effective Counter Intelligence (CI) network.

“The irony is that CI operatives might never even realise that they did succeed in preventing terror attacks when they bust a module, but all it needs for a terrorist is to succeed once, even if he fails 99 times,” a top police officer summed up the dilemma that dogs CI operatives.

If intelligence gathering leading to prevention is to be set aside, the worrisome aspect is the perceived inability of the State to quickly react to an emerging terror situation. The Hyderabad and Cyberabad commissionerates do have QRTs, but the issue is that of their training in what security experts call Close Quarter Battle (CQB) situations.

The two QRT teams are indeed equipped with assault rifles and bullet proof vests. “But the problem is that they are not properly trained. It’s not just enough to have the QRT without proper training,” points out an official. Officials say that the Greyhounds, the commando force raised to tackle counter-Maoist operations, had indeed trained a unit in CQB, house interventions and urban warfare. But the unit had been moved out of Hyderabad. Then the OCTOPUS, a dedicated intelligence and operational unit had never taken off over the controversy of who should control the unit. It had not become fully functional because of the internecine squabbles among senior officers.

The third level of security is through the Physical Security Systems (PSS) like installation of close circuit televisions, which can only be supplemental to the mainline of defence. There are nearly 100 CCTV cameras installed on major road junctions connected through Internet to the control room.

However, these can only be effective tools to help investigation and cannot prevent terror strikes. Going by the reaction of some senior officers, these systems seem to have induced a false sense of security or complacency among them. This complacency can be gauged from the fact that there are no effective checkposts on the entry/exit points. And some officers seem to belileve that each check post could be set up with a cost of Rs 2000 each. And a princely sum of Rs 18,000 is stated to be sanctioned by the DGP for setting up nine check posts. This itself shows how serious is the police department about security in the State capital.

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