Conduct background check before hiring: cops tell firms

SECURITY STEPS After 3 suspected Bodo militants were arrested from Taloja, police create awareness

The industrial units of Navi Mumbai are posing a threat to the safety of the city residents by indiscriminately hiring youth from various places without proper verification of their backgrounds, say city cops.

Even as the police have not ruled out the possibility of untoward incidents, they maintain that they are doing their best and are well-equipped to prevent such incidents.

Three weeks ago, the state antiterrorism squad (ATS) arrested three members of National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) from a Taloja cold storage. One of the accused, Bisho alias Ansai Songa Basumatary, 22, had led a December 2014 massacre in Assam where around 75 people were killed in a tribal village. The suspects were planning to bring more accomplices to Maharashtra to avoid arrest or encounter, the police said.

According to the sources from Navi Mumbai special branch, hundreds of youths from Assam, Meghalaya, West Bengal, Jharkhand and Odisha are working in the industrial units of Turbhe, Rabale, Taloja, Panvel and Nhava Sheva.

“While many of them are working as security guards, some of them are hired as workers and supervisors in the factories and cold storages,” said one official.

Additional commissioner of police of Navi Mumbai, Fateh Singh Patil, said, “Terrorists may come and seek jobs not only in the industrial units but also in other places such as shopping malls. Therefore, it is very important to create awareness about it.”

Patil further said that they had organised several awareness programmes during the anti-terrorism week organised in March.

Suresh Mengade, deputy commissioner of police (crime) said, “Some security agencies and contractors are providing jobs to youths from various states in the industrial units of the city. We have conducted several meetings with such people and asked them to conduct a proper background checking before hiring people in their agencies.”

Ritu Sensua, co- owner of a security agency from Belapur said, “We have been hiring people from West Bengal, Assam, Jammu and Kashmir and other states. However, we do not recruit anyone unless we get a written letter from superintendent of police or deputy commissioner of those vouching for the candidate’s clean background.”

“At times certain companies need double their manpower for a short duration. Probably that is when they hire people,” another agent said.