New Delhi: Ahead of US President Barack Obama's visit to Delhi and the Republic Day celebrations, the Delhi police is taking no chance in ensuring full-proof security to avoid any untoward incident.
Besides a massive seven-layer security ring that will be thrown around the VVIP enclosure on Rajpath for the Republic Day parade, for the first time, the Delhi will use face-recognition cameras around the venue. Such cameras will be installed at the city's entry points to identify any anti-national and criminal elements.
Reports suggest that the police have planned to install the face-recognition cameras at around 100 places including railways stations, airports, bus stands, police-checking booths and close to India Gate. Featuring advanced face recognition algorithm, these cameras can easily identify faces in a crowd and match them to available photographs of terrorists and criminal elements in the police database.
“Thus we will be able to nab the suspect before he succeeds in executing his plan,” the official said.
Massive security arrangements are in place for this year's Republic Day celebrations as the threat perception is higher due to the presence of Mr Obama.
The presence of President Pranab Mukherjee, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and a host of other dignitaries in an open ceremony is a big security challenge for various agencies.
Sources said that nearly 40,000 security personnel, 15,000 more than the last time will be deployed for the event from Delhi Police, central armed forces and other agencies and all metro stations in the radius of one kilometre will be shut down on the morning of January 26.
On Friday, the top brass of Delhi police and other security agencies held meetings with sleuths of US Secret Service and top police officials of neighbouring states to chalk out a coordination plan for the event.
According to sources, officials of the US Secret Service discussed the overall security set up for Mr Obama's visit and also sought certain details regarding the hotel he would stay, routes he will travel and the places he will visit.
They have also asked access to CCTV cameras installed on all the routes travelled by the US President and several emergency exit routes were also finalised for Mr Obama's entourage.
In a related development, an interstate co-ordination meeting aimed at strengthening cooperation and coordination in order to address various issues related to policing in NCR was held under the chairmanship of Commissioner of Police BS Bassi today at the Police Headquarters.
"During the meeting, Bassi instructed officials to keep a watch on an open area for flying of para-glider, micro-light air craft, sharing information, conducting raids and concerted action against Inter-State criminals particularly those involved in heinous offences, repeat offender and gangs etc in order to strengthen measures of counter terrorism," said a senior police official.
The main objective of the meeting was to share terror related intelligence and inputs about various extremist outfits and their designs, besides curbing criminal activities in NCR region and having better coordination on all aspects of policing in view of the coming Republic Day.
Senior officers of Delhi Police and their counterparts from Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Uttrakhand, Rajasthan and Jammu and Kashmir attended the meeting," he added.
The police chief sought cooperation for creation of digitized databank for fingerprints of criminals operating in North India.
(With Agency inputs)
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