The old airport at Begumpet is abuzz with top leaders of the State and country flying in and out for election campaigns. No doubt it’s convenient for the bigshots to land directly in the city centre and head for the venues to address public meetings.
But the question remains how secure it is in this city that had witnessed three major terror attacks in past six years, and continues to be on the radar of terrorist outfits for different reasons. The compound wall is not of uniform height. At some places it is damaged while debris dumped by some persons make scaling it or jumping over a child’s play.
It doesn’t have barbed wire to prevent persons from crossing over. Surely, the compound wall is not an obstruction for persons determined to sneak inside in the dark though ex-servicemen hired by the airport authorities are on watch and ward duty.
After crossing the wall, it would not be difficult for any person to go closer to the chartered helicopters or airplanes being used by the bigwigs. Naturally, questions arise about the safety of the premises and the persons using it.
BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi has flown in here. AICC vice-president Rahul Gandhi is coming on Friday to be followed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi.
City police had reportedly written several times to the authorities either to enhance security systems or hand over the security responsibility to units like Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) to ensure safety of everyone. Yet, little has changed at the old airport.
No change in the old order
Oral instructions to phone messages and paper files to e-cops project, policing had changed a lot in the capital. Point book — note book kept at different places to be signed by policemen on patrolling duty — is one of the old systems that didn’t change a bit.
Each police station area is divided into sectors. To check movement of offenders and anti-social elements, policemen are sent to patrol a sector’s specific area known as beat. The policemen on beat duty are instructed to sign in the point books kept at different places like houses of responsible citizens in the area.
The house owner too will sign the point book noting down the time. This is to confirm that the policemen were present there at that time. Supervising officers of the police station will now and then check the beats, inspect the point books and take action if any discrepancies were found. Patrolling beat-wise checks offences. But its purpose is getting defeated, thanks to some policemen evading duties. They sign point books once in three to four days and warn the house owner not to complain the higher-ups.
Earlier some officers replaced the point books with micro chips which were installed in the wall of a house.
This has sealed the chances of beat constables ditching duties and helped the officers monitor the beats scientifically. For reasons best known to them, the experiment was not extended to all police stations.
