By IANS,
Hyderabad/Gandhinagar : Intelligence agencies have indicated a terror threat along India’s west coast, Home Minister P. Chidambaram said Wednesday but clarified that it did not mean a terror attack was imminent.
“There is an intelligence input that there could be a threat to the west coast. We therefore shared it with Gujarat, Goa and Maharashtra,” Chidambaram told reporters in Hyderabad after formally commissioning the regional hub of the anti-terror National Security Guard (NSG).
“But that does not mean that there is an imminent attack. These inputs are intended to prepare us in case it materialises but let me assure you that it does not mean there will be an imminent terrorist attack,” he said.
Chidambaram said that as per the recently established practice, as soon as an intelligence input was picked up, the central government immediately shared it with the state governments concerned.
Following the input the western coastline was put on high alert.
in Gujarat, all 41 major and minor ports along the state’s 1,600-km coastline were on high alert following an Intelligence Bureau (IB) alert that terrorists could target maritime facilities on India’s west coast, a senior Gujarat Maritime Board (GMB) official said in Gandhinagar.
“All the key ports along Gujarat’s coast at Kandla, Mundra and Pipavav were already on high alert after the Mumbai terror attack (of Nov 26) but now even the smaller ports have been put under heavy security cover,” a senior Gujarat Maritime Board (GMB) official said here Wednesday.
The 10 terrorists who struck Mumbai on the night of Nov 26 had come from Karachi using the sea route, according to investigators. The terrorist attack, which claimed more than 170 lives, put maritime security under renewed focus.