Mumbai police are leaving no stone unturned as terror threat looms large over the city. Last week, local police had a series of meetings across the city with the fishing community along the coastal front of Mumbai, to get them be on the alert against terrorists sneaking into the city through the sea route.

Joint patrolling along the coastline is skeletal and even local fishermen do not venture into the deep sea during the peak monsoon season and hence maintaining an offshore vigil against unidentified vessels entering into Mumbai coastal waters is a herculean task. Therefore, police are organising meetings with the fishing community in Mumbai’s fishing hamlets which is the ears and eyes of the local police located along the coastline.

In the backdrop of the 26/11 attack, the state police had beefed up vigilance along the vast Konkan coastline which covers Thane, Mumbai, Raigad, Ratnagiri and Sindhdrug districts in the state.

The general alert sent out by central intelligence agencies in the wake of Al Qaeda’s Pakistan wing threatening to target India, has kept Mumbai police on their toes as there are apprehensions that the Indian Mujahideen might carrying out a terrorist attack similar to the26/11 terror strike co-ordinated and executed by Laskhar-e-Toiba, Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Pakistan.

In the wake of intelligence inputs from India’s agencies– Research Analysis Wing and Intelligence Bureau which underlines that Indian youth in the age group of 20-25 years are suspected to have joined the ranks of Iraq’s Sunni militant group, ISIS, the union home ministry has sounded an alert in the country.

Intelligence agencies are working round the clock as inputs strongly indicate that a number of youth from metropolitan and 2-tier cities in India have sneaked into Syria and Iraq to participate in the ‘holy war’.

“There are strong apprehensions being voiced in Indian intelligence agencies’ circles that if these youth survive the ‘holy war’ (establishing a Caliphate)  in Iraq, then the obvious choice of destination for exporting these ‘holy warriors’ will be India. The soft targets will be the metros and 2-tier cities in the country. In Maharashtra, Mumbai and Pune have borne the brunt of terror attacks and hence the police need to be vigilant. For around a month, the police have been to be on the alert since terrorists may use any of the routes- land, sea and air, to launch an attack in the state,” claimed a senior police official.