Mumbai terror 'communally injected': Alexander

New Delhi, Jul 31: Former bureaucrat-turned-MP P C Alexander today made a fervent plea to the government to treat the problem of terrorism in Mumbai differently not only because it is the economic power house of the country but has been the target of attacks by ''communally injected terrorism.'' Participating in the continued Short Duration Discussions on the terrorism in the context of recent Mumbai blasts, Dr Alexander said Mumbai was the ''most attacked'' city and every time there was a fresh incident, the nation feels for the plight of the metroplis' people, while appreciating the way the Mumbaikars cope with the disaster.

''However after some time, people forget about it and with no funds flowing to counter the terrorist menace, the situation comes back to the square one, he said, adding that the attacks against Mumbai were no longer confined to smuggling gangs of Haji Mastan, Yusuf Patel and Varadarajan Mudaliar like in the past, but the ''injection of communalism into gangsterism, inspired from the safe havens of Karachi or West Asia, by exploiting the weaknesses of a small section of the society.'' ''This is a special problem and special problems require special ways of tackling it,'' he said.

Mr Alexander said although the Maharashtra Government had sent a Rs 300 crore plan to the Centre for modernising the police force by empowering them with modern and sophisticated weapons, upgrading the communcation equipments and organise a counter intelligence network last year much before the July 11 attacks. But the Centre not only forced Maharashtra to scale down its demand to Rs 130 crores but released only Rs five crore to the state government, he alleged.

When Home Minister Shivraj Patil said Dr Alexander should be sure of his facts and be present when he replied for the short duration discussion, the Independent MP said he would certainly be present in the House to hear the reply.

Dr Alexander, who has served as Governor of Maharashtra, said a mega city like Mumbai required sophisticated electronic equipments to scan and sanitise all incoming trucks in one or two minutes like New York. ''You can't expect a 25 member small force of Anti Terrorist Squad to do wonders if the lorries bring in deadly weapons and RDX into the city,'' he said, adding that ''only 40,000 police personnel with simple lathis in their hands can't be expected to perform multiple jobs in a city of 17 million people and 7.5 million floating population.'' The CCTV should be installed in all vital places and it was time for the country to learn from each disaster, he added.

UNI

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