The Tamil Nadu police have been put on a high level of alert after a series of molotov cocktail attacks on the premises of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) or other Hindu organisation functionaries since Thursday last.
State Director-General of Police C. Sylendra Babu after a review meeting with all Commissioners/Superintendents of Police called for protecting soft targets, places of worship and sensitive locations. Sending reinforcements to places with a history of communal violence, he warned that perpetrators of violence would be detained under the National Security Act.
The incidents of motorcycle-borne suspects throwing molotov cocktails on select targets and unruly crowd pelting stones on buses in different parts of the State started soon after the National Investigation Agency along with the Enforcement Directorate and local police conducted nationwide raids on the premises of the Popular Front of India (PFI) on September 22.
The operation follows specific intelligence inputs and five cases registered by the NIA based on evidence that the PFI leaders and cadres were involved in funding terrorism and terrorist activities, organising training camps for providing armed training and radicalising people to join banned organisations, the investigating agency said in a release.
Investigators had searched 93 locations in 15 States on the houses and offices of top PFI leaders and arrested 45 suspects of which 19 were from Kerala and 11 from Tamil Nadu.
After incidents of molotov cocktail attacks were reported in Coimbatore, Pollachi, Erode, Ramanathapuram and Tambaram on Thursday, Friday and Saturday [Sunday too], Mr. Babu said similar attacks could happen in other places as well and called for strengthening security arrangements. He said police should seize CCTV footage at the crime scene and interrogate the suspects identified in the visuals.
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While deploying additional reinforcements in trouble-prone areas, police and revenue department officials should conduct meetings with peace committees of different groups to ensure peace, he said and instructed that night patrolling and vehicle checks are intensified across the State. Some suspects who were involved in throwing the molotov cocktails were arrested and their motorcycles seized, police were interrogating 250 suspects for their alleged involvement in the incidents of violence, the DGP said.
