Uran scare: Navy scales down alert, cops carry on search

A day after two schoolchildren allegedly spotted five armed men — clad in black masks and pathani suits of the same colour —in Uran, the Indian Navy called off its search operations in the area on Friday evening. It also scaled down its alertness level to “semi-high” from the “highest level”, even as the Navi Mumbai police released sketches of two of the suspects.

The police, though, is continuing with its own search operations in and around Uran, having deployed a large number of officers there. When contacted, Maharashtra police chief Satish Mathur said, “Mumbai continues to be in a state of high alert and our checks are on.”

On Thursday, two schoolchildren — a boy studying in class IX and a girl in class X — had told their teachers about having spotted five men moving suspiciously near a bus depot in Uran. Senior cops, including Navi Mumbai police commissioner Hemant Nagrale, later questioned the two children, after which officers began scouring the area to verify the claims.

Considering Uran’s proximity to Mumbai, with a mere 50 km separating the two places, the state police had sounded an alert and automatic weapons-toting teams from various special forces — including from the National Security Guards (NSG), Anti Terrorist Squad (ATS) and Force One — were deployed for combing operations.

A Navi Mumbai police officer posted in Uran said: “The girl had seen them (the suspects) from close quarters and even heard them talking. Since she is a bit scared, she was not able to tell us if they wore masks or had their faces covered with a veil-like cloth.” He added: “But she could provide us with enough details to make the sketches.”

When contacted, a top Intelligence Bureau (IB) official said, “The girl had seen and heard them speak in two different languages, English and Hindi. One of the men had said, ‘Chalo school mein aur ONGC mein halla bolte hai (Come, let’s attack a school and an ONGC installation).” The official added that the men allegedly spoke about operating in pairs of two. “The girl heard them say, ‘We will go in batches of two,’” he said.

After the Navi Mumbai police heard the girl narrate her account, they immediately alerted the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC) authorities. The ONGC owns a huge plant in Uran, where they bifurcate gas and oil and later distribute it to other plants. Speaking to The Asian Age, a top official from ONGC revealed that the Navi Mumbai police commissioner had paid a visit to the plant to speak to the people in charge there and review the security provisions. The ONGC official added: "In addition to our own private security team, we also have a Central Industrial Security Force team constantly posted at the plant. Following the alert, both the teams increased patrolling in the campus. Extra personnel were also placed at its perimeters.”

The police started scouring locked houses, abandoned buildings and derelict sites in the area to locate the suspects. "We conducted searches in all buildings in the area, apart from in locked houses and under-construction sites. Many of the bungalows in the area are not used regularly since their owners stay in Mumbai or other cities. So we had to contact them and then gain access to these houses,” said an officer.

Meanwhile, the Western Naval Command said in an official statement, “As far as the Indian Navy is concerned, operations based on Thursday's sightings of suspected terrorists are over. The sanitisation of naval areas has been undertaken.” Following the scare in Uran, the Palghar police also started a search along the coastal line under their jurisdiction, including in the Vasai-Virar region, as part of an operation titled, ‘Kinara Mohim’. A Palghar policeman said: "We also conducted a meeting with fishermen, apprising them of the situation and asking them to raise an alarm if they saw anything suspicious."