Mumbai Police upgrade since 26/11: New landing points, response teams, CCTV ramp-up

After the panel flagged the need to tighten coastal security, the Maharashtra Government bought a fleet of 46 high-speed and amphibious boats. As many as 38, as The Indian Express reported Friday, are defunct.

One area where there has been progress was the provision of specialized forces to the police. The Pradhan panel had suggested that commando units be positioned in all urban centres in Maharashtra to enable speedier response during terror attack.

Based on this recommendation, the Quick Response Team, that was already in place, was upgraded and a new unit called Force One was created.

At present, there are eight QRTs, one for every five regions of the city, and each QRT has nearly 100 well-trained police commandos. These units are kept away from normal policing duty and kept “battle ready” through mock drills across the city.

The other unit is the Goregaon-headquartered Force One which has a training facility spread over 96 acres where 300 commandos are stationed.

When it comes to the closed circuit TV coverage of Mumbai, there has been substantive progress. A network of close to 6000 cameras is online and another 6000 are expected to be added to this. In addition, Mumbai Police have integrated their existing CCTV network with those of private and commercial stakeholders across the city.

Said Satyanarayan Chaudhary, joint commissioner of police (Law and Order): “We have an advanced police control room that monitors the city 24 hours a day. Besides having nearly 45,000 plus manpower, we rope in private police whenever required. We have an adequate number of Quick Response Teams (QRTs), armoured vehicles, weapons, and a coordination system to counter and handle any attack or emergency situation.”

Another intervention was the identification, a year of the attacks, of eight landing points on Mumbai’s coastline as vulnerable to infiltration. Personnel from the Maharashtra Security Force (MSF) have been assigned to guard these points.

There are 109 landing points in the city where boats coming from the sea can be moored, police said. “While all of the landing points are covered under CCTV surveillance, a special committee classified 17 of them as ‘A category’ through which infiltration can happen,” said an officer.

The committee identified that eight of them are vulnerable and underlined the need to enhance security at these points including round-the-clock surveillance. To supplement patrolling with aerial surveillance, sources said, trials were conducted last week on a drone system equipped with night-vision cameras. “Our patrolling boats cannot go everywhere in the sea as they are not able to enter the marshy areas. In such locations where we cannot physically enter and check, we can use drones to look for any unusual activity,” an officer said.