New year party will go on in Bangalore, under khaki vigil

Even as terror scare returns to haunt Bangalore decked up to welcome the new year, the police are adamant that they will not let anything dampen the festive spirit.

Additional police personnel would be deployed at crowded localities in the city this weekend, police commissioner Shankar M Bidari said on Monday.

Security would be beefed up at Majestic, malls, shopping areas, railway stations, Bengaluru International Airport, and other crowded places.

Armed policemen deployed on the strategic elevated metro tracks would provide security to nearly 50,000 revellers expected to gather at the MG Road-Brigade Road junction.

Meanwhile on Monday, chief minister BS Yeddyurappa chaired a security review meeting, which decided to beef up security along the state’s coast.

The quick reaction team of the state police has been put on alert, and ordered to be on standby to foil any terrorist design.
“We were told that the coastal districts were vulnerable,” a senior police officer, who attended the meeting, said. The central agencies sounded the alert after four suspected terrorists, who had landed in Mumbai coast, disappeared.
It has been suspected that they had moved along the west coast of the country. Following the terror alert, the Karnataka coast has been put under three-tier security cover. Coast guard and Navy intensified patrolling the Indian exclusive economic zone, while the coastal police were patrolling the coastal area.
It has been suspected that the four suspected terrorists had set sail from Kavaratti in Lakshadweep to Mumbai.
The intelligence department has released the photograph of one of the suspected LeT cadre, identified as Mafoom. Unconfirmed reports stated security officials had detained a bigger vessel in Kavaratti. Its flag or identity could not be immediately confirmed. Security agencies had recently searched a vessel, MV Al-Jazeera, in Mangalore. Nothing suspicious was found in the vessel. The officer added the entire coastline of the state stretching over 350 km would be kept under constant vigil.
“There are strategic installations such as New Mangalore Port and Kaiga atomic power plant, besides more than minor ports, he said, adding that several tourist destinations, frequented by foreigners, also dotted the coastal line.
“The inputs from the security agencies have stated that the police should concentrate on places frequented by foreigners during the New Year celebrations,” sources said, adding that there was no report of any terror outfit sneaking into the state.
Meanwhile, a contingent of 550 paramilitary force personnel had arrived in Bangalore from Tamil Nadu, to ensure smooth polling during the second phase of ZP and TP elections on December 31.
Bangalore has been in the terror radar ever since the first such attack carried out at the Indian Institute of Science on December 28, 2005, in which a former professor of Delhi’s Indian Institute of Technology was killed.
The city witnessed serial bomb blasts on July 25, 2008, in which a woman was killed. Twin blasts outside the M Chinnaswamy Stadium on April 17 this year had left 17 people, including nine policemen injured.