Police Commando City police, along with ICG and the Navy organises a quarterly security operation called Sagar Kavach to check preparedness of the agencies

Ten years ago, ten Pakistani gunmen entered Mumbai via sea route and launched a deadly attack on Mumbai's soil. It has been ten years and the state and central administration are still trying to plug-in the loopholes in the coastal policing.

After 26/11, a major security flaw that came to the fore was porous coastal security. Neither the Indian Navy nor the Coast Guard had intelligence on the 26/11 attack. This called for immediate measures to strengthen the country's coastline.

The Mumbai Police had set up a dedicated Marine Policing Unit and for the first time, its jurisdiction included waters.

In order to add teeth to the Marine Unit, the police had purchased speedboats and sea-legs amphibian boats for sea patrolling.

The state police had also created a dedicated post of Inspector General Coastal Security, who would be a nodal officer to coordinate with Indian Navy and Coast Guard.

The Mumbai police, along with the Coast Guard and the Navy, organises a quarterly Sagar Kavach operation to check the preparedness of these agencies to safeguard the coastline. In his operation, dummy terrorists are tasked to sneak into the city via sea.

"Operations like Sagar Kavach has time and again resulted that dummy terrorists had managed to sneak in the city and gained vantage points. We then analyse the drawbacks and derive measures that needs to be taken to secure our coastline,"said a police officer.

The city police had recently written a proposal to the government asking for sanctioning of dedicated five police stations in the city's 149 kilometre coastline. The task of these police stations would be to do census of fishermen, collect Intelligence and brief government about threats from Coast route and not investigate conventional crimes.

In addition, the Maharashtra Police has sent a proposal to the state government asking for sanctioning of Intermediate Support Vessels (ISV) for bolstering it's coastal policing. The existing Fast Patrol Vessels (FPV) with the police can stay at sea for around five hours, while ISVs can stay at sea for seven days and can reach up to 200 nautical miles, police said.

"Maharashtra has a coastline of 720 kilometre and 842 kilometre creek area. For effective monitoring of coastline, coastal security and fishermen security ISV is the need of the hour," said a police officer.

SECURITY UPDATES

  • After 26/11, a major security flaw that came to the fore was porous coastal security 
  • Neither the Indian Navy nor the Coast Guard had intelligence on the 26/11 attack 
  • This called for immediate measures to strengthen the country’s coastline