Even as a joint team of the Delhi police and Intelligence Bureau quizzed the 20-year-old woman who attempted to break through the barricades of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s convoy near South Block, sources said that this is not the first time that such an incident has taken place.
A highly-placed source, on condition of anonymity, said: “The strange and adamant behaviour of people during routes for VIPs like Prime Minister, President, Union ministers, Cabinet ministers, vice-president and judges is common.”
“Not only does it create unnecessary trouble for us, but it takes away a lot of our time and energy, especially when in most cases we find the reasons extremely trivial and personal,” he added.
The officials said that when such confrontations take place, the standard procedure is to alert the security agencies involved. “The VIP movements are stopped temporarily and the offenders are taken to the nearby police station for interrogation,” said the source.
“In most cases, the violators are released after a warning as they are not a threat.”
Revealing that such incidents occur every other day, a senior police officer of the district added: “Our effort usually is to verify the antecedents as fast as possible and put the matter to an end.”
The sources added that they are mulling to propose to higher authorities for a mechanism for stricter laws in such cases.
Besides the security of the President, vice-president, Prime Minister, Cabinet ministers, judges of the Supreme Court and high court, foreign dignitaries, the Delhi police is responsible for the security of almost 500 protected persons, ranging from category Z+ to categories Y and X, which are given to the protectee on the basis of the threat perception.
In the year 2015, the Delhi police had security arrangement for 594 programmes of VVIPs and 660 VIP programmes.
“The previous year, security arrangement for 83 visits of President and PM scale and five visits of vice-president scale for the visiting foreign VVIPs were laid down,” said the police official.
