'Mumbai-style’ terror bid foiled in Islamabad

Top cop says Safe City Project helped thwart attack

ISLAMABAD: Islamabad’s top cop revealed on Thursday that police thwarted a Mumbai-style terrorist attack in the federal capital in the first week of June.

Inspector General of Police Tariq Masood informed the Senate Standing Committee on Interior that the terror bid was foiled with the help of surveillance cameras recently installed across the city under the multimillion-rupee Safe City Project.



The stunning revelation, however, displeased the interior minister who said police should refrain from giving statements which could cause fear among the general public.

Briefing the Senate panel at a day when authorities were preparing to celebrate the inauguration of the Safe City Project, IGP Masood said the country’s premier intelligence agency informed him and the Islamabad chief commissioner about a possible terror plot.

Although Masood did not share further details of the terror plot before the committee, senior police officials later revealed that the planned attack was similar to the one in Mumbai in 2008. Some 13 terrorists were supposed to attack a premier public sector university and a five-star hotel in Islamabad simultaneously, the officials said. Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) learned of the plot after intercepting some telephone calls.

“It became a test case for newly installed Safe City Project,” the IGP informed the committee. Police, he  said, worked throughout the day, extensively monitoring all entry and exit points and other important and sensitive locations of the capital in a bid to avert the possible attack.

“Cost incurred on the Safe City Project is justified as we successfully warded off that terror incident,” the police chief said in response to a question related to cost of the project.



Some 1,850 security cameras have been installed and connected to a central command and control centre as part of the Rs124.9 million Safe City Project. The committee was informed that Huawei, the contractor of the project, has agreed to train some 1,000 personnel to operate the project in future.

Safe City Project Director Dr Tahir Akram told the committee that installation and commissioning of the project was complete. Not a single camera was damaged because of recent rain storms in the capital. He clarified some media reports and said that criminals’ data would be fed in the database so that any criminal in the capital could be traced with the security cameras.

SSP Traffic Islamabad Malik Matloob told the committee Islamabad Traffic Police (ITP) has been equipped with modern gadgets and old challan books are being replaced with e-ticketing system.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 15^th, 2016.