'Technology roadmap to beat terror in a week'

New Delhi, July 14: A roadmap on how to harness latest technology to combat terrorism will be announced next week, Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal today said.

The Minister, who chaired a high-level meeting to discuss the issue in the wake of the Mumbai serial blasts, told reporters that the government was trying to see if it could compile real-time data on a mass scale and use it with available tools to recreate crime scenes.

Important public places, airports, railway stations and even trains could be equipped with close circuit TV cameras and the images captured could be used to recreate crime scenes later on, he said.

''We have the software and a lot of technology can be used to monitor these places,'' Mr Sibal said.

''Human intervention alone will not help. We need technology to fight terrorism,'' said Mr Sibal.

CSIR Director-General Dr R A Mashelkar and the Department of Science and Technology Secretary were among those who attended the meeting.

Security experts and software companies will be roped in for the project, Mr Sibal said.

''We will formally announce the roadmap next week,'' he added.

Mr Sibal regretted that there was no national data bank on potential sources of explosives like RDX while the country had only 20 people trained in DNA finger printing.

''This is a war we are going to have on terrorists,'' he said at a function to sign an MoU with the UNESCO to set up a regional hub for education and training in biotechnology.

UNI