India on terror alert for Republic Day parades

Indian Border Security Force (BSF) soldiers stand guard next to a barbed wire fence in Srinagar, the main city of India's northern state of Jammu and Kashmir yesterday. Security was stepped up across India for today's Republic Day. PHOTO: AFP

Huge crowds gather in the federal and state capitals to watch parades and fly-pasts attended by the ruling classes, diplomats and foreign guests.

The biggest official holiday of the year has become a major target for India's myriad militant groups ranging from Islamic jihadists to separatist rebels, who reject the day as a symbol of India's unwanted dominance.

The national capital, where President Abdul Kalam will take the salute on the imperial Rajpath, was on "heightened security alert", a police spokesman said.

Chief guest, Bhutan's King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, is himself said to be on a hit list of India's northeastern rebels after his soldiers ousted them from safe camps over the border in his Himalayan outpost.

Buildings flanking the eight kilometre (five mile) route of the parade in the capital were being taken over by security personnel Tuesday, the Press Trust of India news agency said.

The Times of India reported that Delhi police were hunting for "the Jackal ... a lone sniper who seeks to elude multiple checks to take that one snapshot at a high-profile target, as Frederick Forsyth's assassin attempted in the celebrated thriller."

"Rooftop deployment has been doubled," the daily said on its front-page.

The Times said the alert was sparked when customs officers in Calcutta seized more than 100 telescopic sights for rifles which were intended for insurgents in the northeast.

Some 25,000 personnel would be on the streets of Delhi on Wednesday, the daily added.

In restive Indian Kashmir, security forces have thrown tight cordons around planned Republic Day venues in the summer capital Srinagar and its winter twin Jammu, police said.

About 10,000 personnel have been deployed in the Jammu area, a senior police official said. Metal detectors and sniffer dogs were being used.

A bomb attack on Jammu's Maulana Azad Stadium in 1996 killed 10 people and injured scores of others.

At least 40,000 people have been killed since the outbreak of an Islamic insurgency in Kashmir in 1989, according to Indian figures.

Security has also been strengthened in seven northeastern states, where at least 10 groups are fighting for secession.

They include the outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom (Ulfa), which called for a boycott of Republic Day and cautioned people against boarding government buses and trains for 24 hours from Tuesday midnight.

Rebel groups in Assam have staged a string of attacks in the past week, killing six people and blowing up an oil pipeline in a show of strength.

In the main city Guwahati, a bomb squad defused a time bomb believed to have been planted by Ulfa after a woman found it in a plastic bag near her home, the Press Trust of India said.

City police superintendent of police H. Nath awarded her and two relatives 10,000 rupees (210 dollars) each for their alertness.