Last October, an eight-member gang trespassed into the ‘high-security’ Technopark campus here and nearly beat to death a youth who testified in court against the main suspects in a gangland murder case.
The mafia style hit-and-run operation, which involved spotters, trackers, assailants on motorbikes, and a back-up squad to facilitate their escape, caused quite a flutter in the State IT hub, which employed more than 10,000 people. The target was a local youth who chauffeured an IT professional’s car.
In a simulated seaborne terrorist attack on a high-value land target in November, three ‘armed’ operatives made landfall at an isolated stretch of the shoreline here, foxed the police, and infiltrated the ‘well guarded’ Technopark campus to plant a ‘bomb’ there at rush hour.
The police on Saturday said that both these incidents have prompted them to conduct a security audit of the campus at the earliest.
Weak fencing
They have found the perimeter fencing of the campus to be weak and porous. The security personnel and infrastructure on the Technopark campus were also found to be wanting. They feel that they do not have enough background information on scores of persons employed in restaurants and other public utilities on the campus.
Officials said City Police Commissioner P. Vijayan was scheduled to hold a meeting of Technopark authorities and other stakeholders there to start a ‘police assistance centre’ as a first step towards ensuring 24-hour police presence on the campus.
Help to be sought
The police will also seek the help of IT firms and the government to establish security cameras and electronic perimeter fencing to insulate the campus as best as possible from terrorist threats and sabotage attempts.
They will also adopt ‘situation crime prevention methods,’ such as managing parking in such a way that a car bomb explosion will do only minimum damage to life and property. Security check points will be re-arranged to give watchmen and the police better access control.
The police will encourage Technopark employees to hold regular fire drills and disaster management exercises, such as mass casualty evacuation, as their counterparts in developed countries did. Electrical safety of the buildings and campus power grid will be ensured.
The police said fundamentalist organisations were increasingly using cyberspace for training, fundraising, propaganda, recruitment, data mining, and coded communication. The police were also concerned about the possible presence of Left wing extremists and ‘professional’ revolutionaries, in the IT sector. Hence, future policing initiatives will have a cyber forensic element. An official said the Kazhakuttam and Vattapara police stations were likely to be brought under the jurisdiction of the city police as soon as it became a Metropolitan Commissionerate.
