Cops gun for intelligence boss

HYDERABAD: The knives are out in the police department. Despite the intelligence wing having 2000 men, there was no advance information about the Maoist move to transport rockets. Their discovery last week caught the intelligence wing napping.
And the flak is directed towards the high-profile additional general of police in charge of intelligence, Aravinda Rao, who, incidentally, also leads one of the two factions in the state police."The procurement of rockets has been on since 2005. How come the intelligence wing had no wind of it?" asked an official.
The rockets, which were assembled in Ambattur near Chennai, were discovered only due to the chance arrest by Mahbubnagar police of one of the men involved in the transportation.
Senior cops are upset about the intelligence failure because the whole focus of the state intelligence apparatus is on Maoists. "This is a case of total intelligence failure," said a senior official. He added: "This was not a one-time operation.
Such huge rockets were being transported in trucks in an audacious manner yet, strangely enough, our men could not sniff anything," the official said. Rao otherwise is rated as a bright spark and as intelligence chief has direct access to chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy.
What is worrisome for the policemen is also the fact that rockets were being primarily procured for targeting police stations in semi-urban and rural areas which operate without any arms. Recently, the ultras attacked a police station in Atmakur in Nalgonda with similar rockets. Officials admit that with every such attack, the morale of the police goes down.
Although around 675 rockets were seized, about 400 have reached ultra hideouts. Reliable sources said that the director general of police Swaranjit Sen is highly miffed by the turn of events.
After he retires at the end of this year, Sen is in line to become the chief of the centralised command to combat Maoists in south central India.
"This incident can be used against Sen because he is the chief of the state police," a police watcher said. Sen's relations with intelligence chief Aravind Rao are strained from the beginning and this is another reason why the top cop is upset.