Vulnerable to terror threats, Kolkata metro a daily risk for commuters

Mangalore Today News Network

Kolkata, Aug 05, 2016: Entering Masterda Surya Sen station in south Kolkata without undergoing security checks is easy.

 

The X-ray machine does not work, and has been lying covered for about a month. At 10.15 am on Wednesday (July 13), three men in khaki sat beside it, equipped with two hand-held metal detectors, engrossed in chatting among themselves. It was entirely voluntary for the commuters to get their bags checked—and to pass through just ahead of the door-frame metal detector (DFMD).

In short, the country’s oldest metro is a sitting duck.

To add to the infrastructural inadequacies, even the existing mechanism to apprehend terrorists lies underutilised due to a casual approach by the security personnel. The personnel posted at the stations, too, have few sophisticated weapons to deal with attackers before reinforcement arrives.

The unprofessionalism of guards at Masterda Surya Sen station was caught in HT’s camera a week after the RPF conducted a Suraksha Sammelan to review the security arrangements and issued directives for the security staff to ‘remain on the maximum alert’.

This correspondent captured the scene at Masterda Surya Sen station in a video despite a prohibition on photography and videography. Operating since the start of the Kolkata Metro 1984, its 27-km stretch is the city’s lifeline, carrying five lakh passengers every day.

“The security arrangement at metro stations is full of loopholes. The metro rail is unprepared to combat a terror attack,” said Bikash Kumar Chattopadhyay, former assistant commissioner of Kolkata police, who is a daily commuter on metro rail.

During his career as an officer in Kolkata police, Chattopadhyay had investigated the 1993 Bowbazar blast and the American Centre attack of in 2002. A 2013 awardee of the President’s Police Medal for Distinguished Service, he accompanied Team HT to the station to assess the loopholes.