COIMBATORE: Former Coimbatore Police Commissioner C Sylendra Babu had in December 2008 unwittingly alerted US diplomats about a specific security threat to the US Consulate in Chennai prompting the latter to slam the Tamil Nadu police for not officially sharing intelligence inputs. The then State Public Secretary Jothi Jagarajan too had casually engaged the US diplomats on the issue. According to Wikileaks, Babu who was then heading the Special Task Force had casually blurted out to diplomats about the security threat on the Babri Masjid demolition anniversary during a chance encounter at a US-sponsored seminar in which he was participating. On learning about this, diplomats at the Consulate were unhappy. “The Consulate received no advance notification; we only came to know due to the two informal after-the-fact references to the information. This lack of communication is disturbing, especially in light of the fact that the Regional Security Office (RSO) was in close contact with police to make security arrangements for a high-profile event at a five star hotel in Chennai,” the then US Consulate Acting Principal Officer Frederick J Kaplan noted in a confidential cable sent to his headquarters on December 8, 2008. Babu had told the US officials that the police had taken additional measures citing the posting of armed officers on the overpass adjacent to the Consulate (known as Gemini flyover) as an example of the security enhancements. “He was unwilling to provide further details about the threat,” the cable said. Two days later, the consulate officers met the then Public Secretary Jagarajan who confirmed that the info had come in the form of “intercepts” which the Government believed originated from Assam. “Our interlocutors had previously assured us that they would advise us of any specific threats against the Consulate. Instead, we find ourselves learning about a specific threat that they deemed credible enough to prompt additional precautionary measures after the fact. Worse yet, despite ample opportunities for the police to tell us in our frequent liaison with them in the wake of the Mumbai attacks, we only came to know about the threat in the course of small talk,” Kaplan wrote.
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