Hyderabad: With al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri announcing the launch of the Islamist terror outfit’s branch in India, intelligence agencies and police are planning moves to identify terrorist sleeper cells in Hyderabad.
According to highly- placed sources a report by the Cyberabad counter intelligence cell had revealed that the sleeper cell of a terror group based on the city’s outskirts has already conducted a survey of some US-based multinational companies in the city. Officials believe that these cells could become the main tool of the al- Qaeda in coming days to expand its tentacles in the city.
After Zawahiri’s declaration the Intelligence Bureau alerted the Telangana police since Hyderabad is a potential target of many terror groups including the Indian Mujahideen. Top officials said that it’s time to launch measures for gathering intelligence on a large scale about terror groups.
“Certainly covert activities of sleeper cells are going on in the city. If we do not act now, they will turn do dreadful things,” said a top official from the city police.
The Special Branch and Counter-Intelligence Cell in the city have strengthened their surveillance of religious institutions in the city.
However, it is difficult for the agencies to track down sleeper cells because of their nebulous construction.
“The sleeper cells usually function using trained secret agents, who are assigned to gather maximum information about the area they target for an attack. They can easily blend into society without raising any suspicion. The terror agents infiltrate target institutions and live in the city, study the situation and finally carry out the attack when they receive orders from their leader,” said a senior official.
State intelligence agencies and the Intelligence Bureau had failed to identify the sleeper cells in the city before the Dilsuknagar blasts that claimed 17 lives last year.
The terrorists had studied the city taking shelter in the city’s outskirts and had even carried out a test blast in Abdullapurmet before carrying out the main attack at Dilsukhnagar in February 2013.
Meanwhile, the Cyberabad police has started building a massive directory of tenants living on the city’s outskirts. “We are going to create a database of tenants, who are staying in the commissionerate’s limits. Software is being developed to administer the database,” said a senior police official of Cyberabad.
