Civil Aviation Minister Rashed Khan Menon has however ruled out any security lapse at the airport. He claimed standard security arrangement was in place at the airport and so the killer was intercepted. We believe the Minister’s attempt to ally fears is a good step but we must be careful that when the country is trying to shore up its lost image to the global community as safe place for tourists and visitors for business and investment, any more such attempt should not find scope to hit the airport’s security wall.
The fact that the knife-wielding person pretending to be a cleaner of a private firm at the airport has stabbed the Ansar personnel and wounded others is a highly disturbing development. It has exposed blatant lapse of security and scanning of security details of workers and other functionaries at the airport. It also belies the government claim that security measures have been increased manifold in the airport. Checking security details of the airport rest with a competent government machinery. They have the sensitive checklist but if it was not seriously followed, the responsibility lies with them. They can’t avoid accountability anyway. The Sunday’s incident shows the airport is as vulnerable as any time in the past.
We know that a British security firm is working at the airport at a huge annual fee but the incident raises question about the quality of their service in term of safety arrangement. It is unbelievable such attempt was made when they are in overall charge of airport safety.
We know that ISIS and such other outfits are relying on ‘lone wolf’ attackers to hit high value target at global level. There is a growing fear that the airport attacker might have been one such criminal planning major attack. So there must be total security clamp down and nothing — such as man and weapon should be allowed to sneak into the airport. We must recheck everything again.
