Terrorists Infiltrating Startups? Bangalore Police To Make Police Verification Mandatory For All New Recruits

Bangalore Police has received Intelligence inputs that terrorists and extremists are infiltrating IT startups in the city. To stop this, mandatory police verification for all employees would be soon announced by them.

As of now, only cab drivers and school staffers are required mandatory police verification.

The fears are not imaginary; back in June, Intelligence Bureau (IB) had issued a circular, wherein it was mentioned that ISIS (Islamic State) are planning terrorist attacks in South India, and most probably they are trying to infiltrate young startups and IT firms which are always in need of man power.

The Trail

Last year, Bangalore Police arrested Mehdi Masroor Biswas (nick named Shami Witness; Akhoona Shami), who managed one of the most influential pro-ISIS Twitter accounts, which had thousands of followers. He worked as a white collar employee in a major food company in the city, and no police verification was conducted on him at the time of joining.

Apparently, Ministry of Home Affairs and Intelligence Bureau (IB) have told Karnataka Police that there are chances that such infiltrations are more widespread. As per them, some anti-national personals, with terrorism related history, disguised in the form of engineers, managers and executives have already infiltrated into startups and IT firms in Bangalore.

DCP (Intelligence) Maheshwarappa S said, “We plan to send a proposal to Police Commissioner and the DGP requesting them to issue a circular to all startups and IT companies in Bengaluru. We’ll need to check their recruitment lists to do a background verification for new employees,”

Current State of Police Verification

Almost a million people work as salaried employees in Bangalore, who are into BPOs, startups, IT companies and other corporate sector. As of September, 2015, Bangalore Police has only received 13,824 applications for police verification, which is not a healthy sign, as per the police officials.

Police inspector B Ramakrishna, who is in charge of the background verification unit, said, “They come from all over the world, and some may have had terrorist links. We have to take this step in the best interests of the society because we are living in a changed world.”

Additional Burden for Startups?

In case Bangalore Police issues a diktat for mandatory police verification, then it can hamper a young startup in several ways. First of all, the process of recruitment will slow down, as police takes 7-14 days or even more to finish the verification. This will lead to deadlines being missed, and unhappy clients.

But considering the grave nature of the threat, it seems justified. White color terrorists or a sympathizer of terrorists working inside an office, plotting the next bomb blast is indeed a dangerous scenario. Safety of lives, and security of public in large should be the priority here.

We will keep you updated as more details come in.

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