HYDERABAD: The Organisation for Counter Terrorist Operations (OCTOPUS), an elite wing to combat terror activities, has decided to hold special checkpoints at sensitive areas in the city to thwart untoward incidents.
The Octopus commandos, trained by national security agencies to counter terrorism, have come hand-in-hand with Hyderabad law and order and traffic police forces to conduct these surprise checks.
A city senior official told Express that the situation has gone different in the border districts and that the Intelligence Bureau (IB) personnel had issued dossiers to all State govt including TS to stay vigilant, as possibility of receiving threats from terror outfits have increased following Pulwama attack.
“With OCTOPUS team joining the state forces to help conduct special inspections at sensitive localities, we will indeed prevent violence of any kind,” police officials said.
The OCTOPUS team along with police forces conducted random checks at Puranapool and M J bridge on Sunday. While the police was engaged in detaining vehicles for inspections, OCTOPUS made security arrangements with highly sophisticated weapons.
“We requested the assistance of OCTOPUS team in order to provide better security to the people. Random checks would be conducted predominantly at thickly-populated and religiously-sensitive areas and the specially trained commandos will combat all emergency situations. The inspections will continue for a few more days, until the tensions end,” city senior officials said.
It was learnt that the forces have been carrying out similar inspections at different points in the south zone for the past three days.