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Government puts up unprecedented security cover for Barack Obama's visit

Arrival of the most valuable target for terrorists in US President Barack Obama on January 25 has pushed the Indian security establishment to pull all stops and throw an unprecedented security blanket in the capital. Security is being beefed up taking into account even the remotest possibilities of terror threats.

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Arrival of the most valuable target for terrorists in US President Barack Obama on January 25 has pushed the Indian security establishment to pull all stops and throw an unprecedented security blanket in the capital. Security is being beefed up taking into account even the remotest possibilities of terror threats.

Learning from the experience of President Obama's last India visit in 2010, the authorities have picked up all stray dogs in from areas that will be visited by the US president this time. A US satellite had picked up a suspicious image during President Obama's visit to Rajghat in 2010 which had resulted in a few minutes hold up of President's cavalcade. The movement was cleared when the possible "treat" a dog got identified and removed. Threat perception this time looms from spectacular Lone Wolf and suicide attacks by ISIS and al Qaeda affiliates in areas close to places in Obama's itinerary to attacks by Pakistan based terror groups and their Indian affiliates like Indian Mujahideen (IM) in public places having large number of footfalls, schools, railways, malls and markets etc. in main metros and major towns.

A major worry for the security establishment are the 20 odd IM operatives that had slipped into Pakistan and were attached to the dangerous terror outfits of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) that carried out the massacre of school children in Peshawar last month and also al Qaeda in Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) or Qaedat-al-Jihad in (QaJ) which successfully carried out an attack on naval dockyard in Karachi on September 6 last year.

"Some of these operatives have done recces of important places of metros, including Delhi, in the past and could be potentially harmful. Though we are sure they will not be able to penetrate the security cordon thrown around important places, any place targeted elsewhere in the capital or other metros can create a security scare and bring bad reputation to us," said sources.

To keep such threats at bay till January 26, the Delhi Police has virtually flooded nearly all important places in an around the Lutyen's zone, important schools, markets, malls with gun wielding security personnel in combat fatigues and installed other obtrusive security arrangements such as door framed metal detectors (DFMDs).

A second advance security liaison team of US officials comprising of CIA, FBI and NSA that arrived in Delhi on Friday is slated to have marathon meetings with Indian security agencies from Saturday onwards to prepare arrangements in minutest possible details to provide fool-proof security cover during President Obama's stay in India.

The US has pressed into nearly 500 US Secret Service agents for President Obama's security whose writ will run for three days with anything concerning security of their President.

"The US security is not taking any chances. There are several things which even we do not know are being told only on the need to know basis," a very senior official in the security establishment said.

The officials are tight lipped even to spell out what is on Obama's itinerary and which all places will the US President visit and when? The only thing that is known is that the US President will watch the Republic Day parade as the chief guest along with President Pranab Mukherjee and PM Narendra Modi.

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