IMPHAL, March 12: The State home department will take up immediate measures to counter the recent trend of bomb attacks in the Imphal city and will be soon be making the installed CCTV cameras functional. The government will also be installing additional cameras, said the Deputy Chief Minsiter, Gaikhangm, who is also in charge of the Home portfolio.
The Deputy Chief Minister was speaking with pressmen at the office of MPCC President this evening.
He said top police brass will shortly be holding a meeting and will decide on the street frisking system in order to screen for explosives.
Currently the police conduct foot patrolling as well as motorcycle mobile surveillance round the clock in city.
He said for the Moreh route his government has already requested the Union Home Minister to provide the X-ray machines to screen for concealed objects.
He said frisking everybody on the street all the time is impossible. Moreover, the plice earn a lot of complaints from the public for doing this.
This being the case, an X-ray scanner for vehicle may be what Imphal City needs urgently, he said. He however said this machine is prohibitively costly.
To a question whether he thinks yesterday`™s blast was linked to the agitation for implementation of the ILP, he said he would not he hasty to link up the incident to ILP issue as nobody has claimed responsibility for blast as yet.
As Home Minister it would be unfair for him to point fingers at anybody but what is certain is some anti-social elements are determined to destabilise the social harmony in State.
Perpetrators of such crimes are the common enemies of not only Manipur but humankind he said, pledging to deal with them with tough measures.
He said the police are investigating into the incident minutely and expressed hope that the culprits will be booked very soon.
Answering another query, he said it would be wrong to term Manipur as the bomb blast capital. He also said if the miscreants were targeting non-local people only for in yesterday`™s incident many of the casualties were local people. Let us wait for the investigation report to be ready before making presumptions, he said.
Gaikhangam said that in his opinion police are doing an excellent job to control the law and order situation in the State. The state government is going to hold a meeting with top police brass for upgrading security measures he added.
To another query, the Home Minister said as far as his knowledge goes no security personnel is complicit in the crime. However the Home department is a very large family with 20,000 to 30,000 manpower and possibilities of black sheep cannot be completely ruled out.
He however said his government will not leave any stone unturned to find the culprits, whoever they are. Frisking will be tougher, but he has cautioned the department of the charges of police forcibly taking away money and mobile phones from students etc.
He said detecting IED brought into the city or market place is not simple as the miscreants may bring in the component of the IED separately.
The Deputy Chief Minister also appealed for the cooperation of the public in this common fight.