BOMBAY, 30 July 2006 — Bombay police yesterday decided to upgrade the security to the maximum level, Z-plus grade, of film stars Shahrukh Khan and Amitabh Bachchan. They have also upgraded to maximum level the security of industrialist Mukesh Ambani and cricketer Sachin Tendulkar.
Speaking to Arab News, a senior police official said that the decision of beefing up security for these icons was taken following the disclosures from alleged Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists during interrogation. They had allegedly told police that besides targeting the Bhaba Atomic Energy plant in Trombay and a Filmfare award function, they had also planned to attack the film stars, the industrialist and cricketer. Accordingly security for cricketers undergoing training at a camp in Bangalore has also been beefed up, the official said.
“We have planned a strategy of tit for tat to counter terrorism. The only answer to eradicate terrorism is to think according to the mindset of the terrorists and respond in the same term,” said an Anti-Terrorist Squad officer.
Meanwhile, claiming to have achieved a major breakthrough in the suburban trains blasts case, the Crime Branch sleuths on Thursday night arrested alleged LeT’s western India chief Faisal Ataur-Rehman Shaikh and his younger brother Muzammil Shaikh from their hide-outs at Triputi Building, Mayanagar area on Mira Road in Thane district. The two were produced before a magistrate in Mazgaon Court which remanded them to police custody for 15 days.
According to a Crime Branch police officer, the two brothers were picked, interrogated and then handed over to the ATS for further investigations.
Muzammil Shaikh, the official said, was a software programmer in an American software company in Bangalore. Both brothers, the police alleged, had been trained in Pakistan and Bangladesh.
