Dimonds worth 3.5 kg Dimonds stolen at Mumbai Airport......

I did not post for some time as i have been was busy...and as a matter of fact we are on "fog stations" .. ack...misery and pain and now start the days of rookies getting lost on the ramp when there is dense fog...and crying for help late departure-arrival......well here the bad news.....




13 Oct 2007 Manju V & Nitasha Natu,Times Of India.

##MUMBAI: A consignment containing 3.5 kg of diamonds and gold jewellery was stolen from Mumbai airport on Thursday night. The theft took place after 9.30pm when a Thai Airways flight from Bangkok, TG 317, landed in Mumbai.

As per the norms, such consignments have to be received at the final destination by a team comprising officials involved with airport security (in this case the Central Industrial Security Force), the airlines' ground handling agency (which, for Thai Airways, is Air India) and representatives of the Metals and Minerals Trading Corporation. An airport custodian for precious cargo may also be present.

"But when the aircraft landed and the cargo was offloaded, the receiving team had not yet reached the spot," said an airport source. "One of the consignments contained only gold jewellery and the other had diamonds worth crores. They had both originated at different points, one from Auckland (New Zealand) and the other from Narita airport (Japan). The final leg of their journey was from Bangkok to Mumbai. The cargo was offloaded at Bay 53 at Mumbai along with other boxes," the source added.

The Sahar police have registered an FIR under section 379 of the Indian Penal Code for theft and have rounded up for questioning dozens of workers and officials who had been present in the area on Thursday night. There is some discrepancy over what happened next. The airport source said the two consignments were then "left on the tarmac without any special attention". However, Rakesh Maria, joint commissioner (crime) for Mumbai police, said, "After the stolen container was offloaded at the Mumbai airport, it was to be stored in a secured area. But the handlers put it in an area where empty containers are stored.

Minutes later, the receiving team arrived near the plane only to find that all the cargo had already been offloaded. The team rushed to the cargo complex where all containers are usually taken. The cargo complex maintains a register of every container that enters its gates. "While the gold jewellery consignment had reached the cargo complex, the register had no details of the one carrying the diamonds," the airport source said.##



There is a saying for people who work at the airports," The airport is a place where only aircraft's land and take of ,apart from that there many business which run from the airport apart from legeal business.......

This week has shown that the calm was just a breather, bomb blast in Ajmer and a fidayeen attack in Kashmir shows that how venerable we are and how easy it is for anyone to plan and execute...I hope people with power to change the system listen...as infiltration like this shows that we have a chinks in our armour......

VT on security

Profiling a Strong Anti-Terror tool...

To Profile or not to Profile is a big question for many airlines around the world, anti-profiling groups or civil liberties have gone one step further and tagged Profiling as Racial Profiling(targeted at particular race or religion).

Many people have said a lot about it, civil liberties groups have criticized it gone to courts and filed cases, as a practising profiler , i find it one of the best tool to stop terror however it has to be used with extreame care.

What exactly is profiling? ....

It can be defined as.....Profiling is a mix of interviewing techniques and close observation of selected targets body language which is used to identify and segregate him from the rest with out his knowing and to make sure if he/she are a threat or not to the aircraft and terminal building,in doing so the profiler has to keep in mind that every reaction of the targets body , facial reaction,verbal clue or any other movement of the body is the logical extension of the persons thought process …which will remain constant and carries hidden clues of his exact intetion......The main aim of profiling is to stop the terrorist's escalation towards its ultimate goal.

If we can stop a terrorist prior to his/her taking there seat in the aircraft, it would be a major step in preventing terror in the skies and would make our skies safe.

There are many different types of profiling techniques (most of these do not use machine to segregate passenger, CAPS) the above mentioned is just one of the many.

Profiling is the best way of stopping a threat right there and then it can be used before a passenger even enters the terminal building, it is a weapon if used properly can have very positive results it has the capacity to stop a threat before it goes out of hand. Proflier's are like code breakers who have to break the toughest code ,The human body.

The human body is a like a cryptogram, it is a walking talking one time code pad and the profiler has to break that code ,the human body is an antenna which is sending non- stop signals and the profiler has to decipher those signals to break in to them and come out with the results.

I had to write this as as i favor profiling and i know of its utilities and what it can do,many learned people have said that it should not be used as it targets people of a particular race and religion.I beg to differ here as i belong to the aviation industry and have seen how it works and how it is used, i can't say about people who are hell bent on misusing it, for them it is a short cut ,it like saying you belong to XYZ race or religion so you are a suspected terrorist, that's the easy way out with of the situation...

Airline security and airport security use profiling, it is an added weapon for them. Aviation Security Regulatory bodies world-wide have made profiling mandatory,it now depends how the airlines use it,some favor it some don't as it takes time and there flights get delayed.


Remember there are no short cuts in Aviation Security.

VT on security