Sports

Security: Bomb squad combs match venue

As many as 5,000 security personnel, including a 100-member bomb squad, have been deployed to cover the match.

Afp December 24, 2012 Less than a minute read

Indian bomb squad officials carry out a routine check outside The M. Chinnaswamy Cricket Stadium in Bangalore on December 24, 2012. PHOTO: AFP

BANGALORE: Police bomb squad officers and sniffer dogs searched Bangalore stadium yesterday as part of a massive security operation for the start of the first Pakistan cricket tour to India for five years.

Hardline Indian nationalist organisations have threatened to hold protests outside all the venues for the five-match series, which begins in Bangalore tonight.

"As both governments have agreed to hold the series, no organisation will be allowed to disrupt the match," said Bangalore police commissioner Jyotiprakash Mirji.

As many as 5,000 security personnel, including a 100-member bomb squad, have been deployed to cover the match, fearing attempts to disrupt the game or even stage an attack. Shiv Sena, a Hindu nationalist party based in Mumbai, has branded the tour a ‘national shame’ and accused Indian cricket authorities of ‘betraying the country for sake of money’. The same organisation dug up the pitch at the Feroz Shah Kotla ground in New Delhi in 1999 ahead of an India-Pakistan Test although the match did go ahead.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 25^th, 2012.