Even as Odisha has got a new Director General of Police (DGP), from security point of view the State has been of late facing new and tough challenges.
The Al Qaeda terror link in Cuttack suburb and arrest of Abdur Rehman last year, Maoists stepping up their cadre recruitment in newer areas in the State and going on a killing and vandalising spree, besides growth of Bangladeshi infiltration via sea route have been quite disconcerting.
Although Odisha is not new to the Maoist insurgency and infiltration from Bangladesh, terrorism certainly has been the latest shocker. There were talks over a long time that Pakistan-based terror outfits are targeting certain strategic locations in Odisha like the defence establishments in Ganjam, Baleswar and Balangir districts, besides renowned temples like the Sun Temple of Konark and the Puri Jaganath Temple. But the fact that terrorist training is imparted under the garb of madrasa near the millennium city of Cuttack was not in the wildest thoughts of the people of the State.
The busting of the madrasa of Rehman who was found to be importing teen boys from poor and hapless families from neighbouring Jharkhand and other parts of the country to radicalize them and the revelation that he was getting thousands of rupees from different foreign sources have hammered at the dyed-in-the- wool mindset of the Odias that they are living in a peaceful State and there is no threat of terrorists as such to their life and society.
Earlier, the arrest of a contractual staffer Iswar Behera in the defence establishment in Chandipur in Baleswar district for supplying info and photographs to terrorist outfits in enemy nation and the serial train arson in Puri and Bhubanswar which were later found to be handiwork of foreign agencies have also created apprehensions of the very safety of life in Odisha. One Ramchandran Subash was arrested in connection with the train fire and the NIA is investing the case.
Even as the investigations into the cases of Rehman and Subash are inconclusive, the arrest of increasing number of Bangladeshi infiltrators in Odisha and a well-calibrated effort by terrorist outfits to send the Bangldeshis through sea and rail route to Odisha have created headache for the police and security agencies. The stream of incidents has busted the myth that Odisha is a peaceful State.