A day before Bangalore was rocked by a high intensity blast on Wednesday, the Intelligence Bureau had cautioned Bangalore and Hyderabad of being under threat from terror strikes.
Sources in the central intelligence agency told Deccan Herald on Wednesday that “the advisory from New Delhi was notified to the State Government on Tuesday.”
Bangalore Police Commissioner Raghavendra H Auradkar, while conceding that there was an alert about the possible terrorist act, maintained that the alert was not specific.
The IB advisory was sent following the blasts during the Boston Marathon in the US. The note was also issued in the backdrop of the ongoing IPL matches and, it advised states to take precautionary measures to avoid possible terror attacks from the Indian Mujahideen (IM) modules, the sources said.
IM had carried out blasts at M Chinnaswamy Stadium here on April 17, 2010 ahead of an IPL match. Over 15 people were injured in the twin explosions.
“We were completely focused on the elections and related political activity. The information we have indicates that agencies of the state government were also involved in the same, ignoring threat alerts,” IB sources said.
The State government had been kept in the loop of such attacks since the Hyderabad blasts in February this year. However, intelligence sources reveal that the state government and its agencies were busy with the elections since early March.
“After the Hyderabad blasts, two cities from the State, Bangalore and Hubli, were considered to be under threat,” the sources said, adding that the agencies had concluded on the threat perception based on their intercepts.
Home Minister R Ashoka, however, said the government is yet to verify if there were any lapses in acting on the said alerts.
“We are yet to ascertain what exactly happened and we cannot comment on anything until the investigation is complete,” he added.