By IANS
Chennai : Security was tightened in the southern state of Tamil Nadu Sunday following twin blasts in Hyderabad that claimed 42 lives Saturday.
Nearly a thousand people, “suspicious characters” as police identify them, have been taken into preventive custody across the state.
Chennai Police Commissioner G. Nanchil Kumaran held a security review meeting with high-ranking officials here.
Police patrolling has been intensified in the city since Saturday night. As many as 53 check posts have been installed in and around Chennai city to check vehicles entering the city.
Similar blockades are in place in the communally sensitive city of Coimbatore and in the temple town of Madurai.
Security around the vital installations of ports, airports, major railway and bus stations in the state has been tightened.
Boarding and lodging houses are being combed for suspicious people.
The Coast guard, the Navy and the coastal police have also been put on high alert along Tamil Nadu’s more than 1,000-km coast.
Meanwhile, a fisherman found a box of explosives off the Kodiakarai coast in Nagapattinam district Saturday, officials said.
Police are inquiring into the origin of the box that got entrapped in fisherman’s net.
The box weighed nearly one kilogram and had a label in red reading “explosives”. There were also other markings on the lid of the box, saying “IPC propellant – 6 pieces”, police said.