Security on the tip of a finger

Visitors will be welcomed by audio visuals of the `it could happen to you’ variety, Gulshan Kumar’s murder being used as a case in point. Besides the usual nifty security cameras and bulletproof vests, the `fingerscan’ will be the centrepiece. This innocuous little box-shaped device fitted on a door allows you access only if it recognises your fingerprints. “The fingerscan is the latest in biometric access systems which use unique characteristics of human beings like hand symmetry, voice and retina for identification,” said G B Singh, director, Tops security. The system costs upwards of Rs 2 lakhs and guards ultra-security installations like the doors of the US Strategic Air Command controlling US nuclear missiles. The explosive detector whose sensors can `sniff’ chemical traces of explosives, will also be on exhibit.

Fittingly the exhibition will be inaugurated by Deputy Chief Minister Gopinath Munde, who had some anxious moments when his own security cordon was easily breached by a knife-wielding youth. Window shopping in this grand security systems exhibition organised by Tops security systems will be politicians, policemen and businessmen. Rahul Nanda, Chairman and Managing Director of Tops spells out his sales spiel: “Security investment is not an expenditure.” The tall, strapping Nanda is all set to play New Age Santa Claus hawking a bagful of hi-tech security gizmos to the elite. However, Nanda points out that security systems are easily affordable. “A decent full-featured system with burglar alarms and motion detectors comes for just Rs 10,000,” says Nanda. “That’s less than what we pay for a television.”

Also on display at the exhibition will be a car with its glasses coated with this shatter proof glass film. Select visitors will be invited to take a swipe at its windows with a hockey stick, says Nanda. “A lot of people could have been saved if the windows of the Bombay Stock Exchange had been coated with this film during the March 1993 bomb blasts,” says Nanda, explaining how many victims were maimed by flying shards of glass. The films forms a strong bond with the glass and is also bullet resistant.