Mumbai: To avoid terrorist attacks through sea and to protect vital drainage installations, the Storm Water Drains department of Mumbai has set up protective steel grills at outfalls as mentioned in the 2022 Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) budget.
“We have installed protective grills to avoid terrorist attacks or any other attacks from other agencies. Also there is a requirement from the police commissioner to install these protective grills so that nobody can enter illegally. These grills are important for the protection of the city and to avoid any kind of attacks that have happened earlier,” said a BMC official.
According to the BMC official, they have also installed these protective grills on Bombay Port Trust (BPT) area because tanks of vital resources like diesel and petrol are stored in this area. Moreover, a storm water drainage has been installed that passes through the BPT area which needs this protective grill.
“The storm water drains are big drains which are discharging storm water into creeks, rivers or into the sea which are closed networks. So for this purpose we have installed the protective grills. There are 56 locations where this has been installed in Mumbai city and suburbs. We are not planning for anymore such installations because only closed drains require it, big open drains do not require such installations because it’s easy to trace out anything out of the regular compared to the closed drains. That’s why we have installed these grills at only the required 56 locations,” added the official.
Similar to the protective grills at outfalls which can avoid any attack through sea route, there have been many other measures taken by the government to avoid terrorist attacks after the 26/11 attacks in which terrorists came to Mumbai via sea and carried out a series of coordinated attacks.
