Goa has just turned the corner leaving behind the peak week of its tourism season, with the politicians giving the police force a pat on the back for the exceptional arrangements done to ensure that the traffic flow was smooth and that security of the local population and the tourists was well taken care of. The Tourism Minister is already looking ahead to the carnival in mid-February that will again bring in a large number of tourists to the State, not as many as the New Year Eve brings, but still considerably more than other weeks during the tourist season. This past week has brought, according to the Tourism Minister, a large number of tourists and the arrangements proved that ‘Goa is a safe destination for tourists’.
But, just how safe, is a question that begs to be answered.
Goa has been lucky and never had even a brush with any kind of terror attack, but that does not necessarily indicate that the security in the State is up to scratch. In the past there have been a number of terrorists who have stayed in Goa, including David Headley who undertook the recee for the Mumbai 26/11 attacks, with the local police being unaware of their presence. According to research on terrorism activities in India, Goa is seen as a ‘comfort zone’ for those involved in subversive activities.
To prove just how easy it is to breach security in the State, one just has to look at how porous some of our main establishments that draw the largest number of people are.
For instance the railway station at Vasco that is one of the main stations in the State, has little or no security in place. A Herald team that staked out the station on New Year’s Day, a day when security should have been at the highest alert, found that not only is the station accessible easily through the main entrance, but the security personnel on duty are more occupied with their mobile phones rather than in ensuring the security of the station. Getting busy on the mobile is quite common among police personnel. In November the North District Superintendent of Police had issued an advisory banning the constabulary from constantly using mobile phones while on duty, stating this would be treated as misconduct and the officer penalised. This was not the first such advisory, as in 2014 the IGP had issued a similar order.
The security checks at the Vasco railway station, as the Herald team discovered, are perfunctory with not even a metal detector at the entrance. The door frame metal detector that was once at the entrance, was dismantled for repairs some months ago, and has not been brought back or replaced. It is from this station that the Nizamuddin Express to New Delhi, and so many other passenger trains, start and end their journeys.
Vasco is just an example. Two months ago in November 2017, the law enforcement authorities in Goa had undertaken the Sagar Kavach security exercise for two days. This security exercise is meant to assess the coastal security mechanism and provide seamless seaward cover along the Goa coast from the coastal belt area to the limit of the territorial waters. While it causes much disruption to the quotidian of the people, this particular exercise exposed the weak security in the State. While one ‘bomb’ was discovered and defused, the other team of ‘terrorists’ managed to evade the high alert and plant a bomb in the office of the Police Headquarters. There obviously is an urgent need to step up the security in the State. It is commendable that the Christmas-New Year week passed by smoothly, it is also imperative that security be tightened in the State.
