'Intelligence could have averted blasts'

Home Minister RR Patil, on Wednesday, conceded that ‘correct intelligence’, and not modern ammunition, was needed to prevent attacks like the July 13 serial blasts.

Home Minister RR Patil, on Wednesday, conceded that ‘correct intelligence’, and not modern ammunition, was needed to prevent attacks like the July 13 serial blasts.

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“No CCTV, modern weapons and arms could have saved the situation. The group [of terrorists] has worked in a clandestine manner. But correct intelligence could have prevented the blasts,” Patil said during a discussion in the legislative council on the Mumbai blasts.

However, Patil went on to defend the police force. “The police received 474 intelligence inputs in 2010, and 213 in the past year. All have been taken care of. Not one case has gone undetected,” Patil said. He stated that the state has spent Rs 16 crore on setting up the Maharashtra Intelligence Academy in Pune.

To support his case, Patil cited two cases in which intelligence inputs were processed adequately, and potential attacks were averted. The first was that in which a terror attack on the RSS headquarters in Nagpur was foiled. The other was the case in which 26 kilograms of RDX was seized before it could be smuggled into Gujarat.

Patil announced that the BMC would get 'unlimited police force' to remove encroachments and hawkers. Patil had previously blamed congestion and encroachments as major hurdles in policing crowded places. “This is a birthday gift to Shiv Sena [it was Sena executive president Uddhav Thackeray's birthday on Wednesday]. Now they have to remove encroachments,” he said. Patil emphasised that community policing and frequent interactions with citizens could amplify anti-terror intelligence. "We will get mandals, youth associations together and give them basic training so that they work closely with the police," he said.

Patil added that the department will devise a separate action-plan for cities like Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Thane, Pune, Nashik and Nagpur and allocate additional police force for better security.