Entering Masterda Surya Sen station in south Kolkata without undergoing security checks is easy.<\/p>\n
The X-ray machine does not work, and has been lying covered for about a month. At 10.15 am on Wednesday (July 13), three men in khaki sat beside it, equipped with two hand-held metal detectors, engrossed in chatting among themselves. It was entirely voluntary for the commuters to get their bags checked\u2014and to pass through just ahead of the door-frame metal detector (DFMD).<\/p>\n
In short, the country\u2019s oldest metro is a sitting duck.<\/p>\n
To add to the infrastructural inadequacies, even the existing mechanism to apprehendterrorists lies underutilised due to a casual approach by the security personnel. The personnel posted at the stations, too, have few sophisticated weapons to deal with attackers before reinforcement arrives.<\/p>\n
The unprofessionalism of guards at Masterda Surya Sen station was caught in HT\u2019s camera a week after the RPF conducted a Suraksha Sammelan to review the security arrangements and issued directives for the security staff to \u2018remain on the maximum alert\u2019.<\/p>\n
This correspondent captured the scene at Masterda Surya Sen station in a video despite a prohibition on photography and videography. Operating since the start of the Kolkata Metro 1984, its 27-km stretch is the city\u2019s lifeline, carrying five lakh passengers every day.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe security arrangement at metro stations is full of loopholes. The metro rail is unprepared to combat a terror attack,\u201d said Bikash Kumar Chattopadhyay, former assistant commissioner of Kolkata police, who is a daily commuter on metro rail.<\/p>\n
During his career as an officer in Kolkata police, Chattopadhyay had investigated the 1993 Bowbazar blast and the American Centre attack of in 2002. A 2013 awardee of the President\u2019s Police Medal for Distinguished Service, he accompanied Team HT to the station to assess the loopholes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Entering Masterda Surya Sen station in south Kolkata without undergoing security checks is easy. The X-ray machine does not work, and has been lying covered for about a month. At 10.15 am on Wednesday (July 13), three men in khaki…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/indianewsnet.com\/marathi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19847"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/indianewsnet.com\/marathi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/indianewsnet.com\/marathi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indianewsnet.com\/marathi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indianewsnet.com\/marathi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19847"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/indianewsnet.com\/marathi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19848,"href":"https:\/\/indianewsnet.com\/marathi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19847\/revisions\/19848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/indianewsnet.com\/marathi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indianewsnet.com\/marathi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indianewsnet.com\/marathi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19847"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indianewsnet.com\/marathi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=19847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}