Bomb threat at EGL

Bomb threat at EGL
The Times of India

Bangalore: The IT industry in Bangalore is clearly going through some tense moments ever since Wednesday’s attack at IISc. At 12 noon on Friday, the Embassy Golf Links Business Park located at the Intermediary Ring Road received a call that a bomb has been planted at its premises. While the owners of the property were quick to act, work came to a grinding halt for almost the whole day.

Embassy Golf Links houses about 10 well-known companies including IBM, Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, Covansys, ANZ IT, LG Soft, Fidelity among others. All these companies employ close to 17,000 people operating out of the Park.

“One of the companies got a call and we issued our advisory to all companies. The police is yet to ascertain the source of the call. However, all employees were moved to designated safe assembly areas while the police and the bomb squad went about their search operations,’’ Rajan Vishwanath, head-property, Embassy Golf Link Business Park, said. By evening, the police gave clearance only for some buildings within the Park that had undergone thorough search operations. However, the day was unproductive for most employees.

The presence of several MNCs makes the IT capital a soft target for acts of terrorism, and the IISc incident clearly seems to have triggered off a fear factor.

According to George Huang, COO of Huawei Technologies, India, “Bangalore has earned a good reputation globally for its IT prowess. Such incidents will dampen the spirit of the prospective investors, MNCs operating in India and foreign nationals visiting India, and impact the image of the garden city.’’

Defence set-ups step up security

Bangalore: Security at the normally high security places like HAL, DRDO and NAL have been stepped up. However, the mechanism is more manual than technological i.e. security has been beefed up only manually with security personnel. “We do not have the roving cameras — the cost is exorbitant and you need towers to activate them. They are used as very high-security measures,’’ said a HAL official.