A “public interest litigation” petition has been filed in the Madras High Court for a direction to the Tamil Nadu government to establish an anti-terrorism squad (ATS), along with a quick reaction force (QRF), to tackle the possibility of terrorist attacks through the long coastline that the State shares with Sri Lanka.
The petitioner, B. Jagannath, an advocate, claimed there was a possibility of the proscribed Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) regrouping in the island nation owing to the economic crisis. He further claimed “radical Jihadi elements” from Pakistan and Afghanistan, too, could attack India from Sri Lanka.
The litigant claimed this was not a “fear or rumour-mongering hate petition” filed to defame the State government. Referring to the 2019 Easter blasts in Sri Lanka, he said cross-border maritime infiltration of radical terrorists into the country “might become a grim reality, given the fact that there’s an influx of a large number of Bangladeshi and Rohingya Muslims settled in Tamil Nadu with a ‘radical’ mindset.”
