On December 3, top Intelligence and Delhi Police officials held a closed-door meeting at a secret location in Central Delhi to review a red alert issued by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The US agency had intercepted terrorist chatter indicating possible attacks in Delhi targeting VVIPs and public functions since campaigns for the Delhi elections have already begun. Top police sources confirmed that in view of the several engagements of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the capital and the visit of US President Barack Obama as the chief guest for the Republic Day parade on January 26, the plan to fortify the capital was formalised at the meeting. Two confidential advisories, one comprising seven pages and another four pages, were prepared by the central intelligence agencies and sent to all states and union territories on Friday. The documents form a blueprint for the strategy on how to secure schools, markets, highways, crowded areas and Lutyens’ Delhi where the ruling classes live from terror attacks and how to strengthen the security cover of five-star hotels and places with high footfalls. The CIA alert had categorically mentioned “remnants of Lashkar-e-Taiba and Indian Mujahideen operatives based in Pakistan may carry out terror strikes.”
Commissioner of Police B S Bassi and two Special Commissioners of Police in charge of security and law and order—SBK Singh and Deepak Mishra—have drawn the security plans for the national capital.
Security manpower was substantially increased immediately after the meeting. Central intelligence agencies have deployed seasoned operatives from Jammu & Kashmir, Punjab and the North eastern states on a deputation of three months in Delhi. Many of them have been attached with the local police to identify suspicious activities in vulnerable areas. The reason for deploying intelligence operatives serving in insurgency-hit states is that they are experts in detecting suspicious activities. Over a period of time, they have developed their own manuals to identify in a crowd dangerous suspects belonging to the particular region they serve in. “Even if terrorists are disguised as vendors in markets, our seasoned spooks can identify the suspects. They have their own operational methods, which cannot be disclosed,” sources said.
The team has already carried out the first phase of the sanitisation process in Delhi by scanning guesthouses, brothels, cheap hotels and isolated monuments. They have also carried out inspections at crowded markets and shopping malls to ensure that the Standard Operating Procedures (SoPs), to deal with terror-related eventualities, are in place.
“Soon we will initiate a second screening. Visitors from Pakistan and Afghanistan staying in Delhi hotels are being screened by the agencies. The reason for not staying with relatives and the references mentioned in their visa details are also being recorded by agency officials to ensure no slip-up this time. The local police, working along with central intelligence officers are re-visiting the database of all newly opened guesthouses and dormitories at railway stations,” sources added.
On December 16, the Multi Agency Centre (MAC) generated another input after a tip-off from a friendly foreign agency. MAC is a integrated information centre developed by the home ministry to gather inputs of different security agencies and disseminate it to all of them.