Gujarat police to check cyber cafe records ahead of polls

Police have started a massive drive across Gujarat’s cities and towns to check the records of visitors to the various cyber cafes as a precautionary measure ahead of the polling for the state’s 26 Lok Sabha seats April 30. A senior police official involved with the drive here told IANS that police constables on various beats have started carrying out checking of the visitor entries made in the logbooks of cyber cafes in about 25,000 cafes across Gujarat.’The records are being checked from the month of March this year,’ the official added.

According to the official, a meeting of crime branch officials in all the district headquarters is being held every three days to plan out strategies for keeping a watch on visitors to the cyber cafes during the campaigning and conduct of polls in Gujarat.

The target cities and towns where the drive is being conducted are Ahmedabad, Rajkot, Vadodara, Surat, Bharuch, Bhavnagar and Porbander besides several rural pockets of the state, particularly in North Gujarat.

‘We have found that several cyber cafe owners are negligent and do not maintain the records of visitors properly. In such cases action would be taken against cyber cafe owners. A police team in each district headquarter had been assigned the task of making regular rounds of cyber cafes and checking the logbooks,’ the official said.

The police teams doing rounds of cyber cafes have been asked to be extra vigilant during visits of VIPs in the entire state and sending police constables to cyber cafes several times a day to check who is visiting the cafes during the VIP movement in all cities and towns.

Cyber cafes located in the interior parts of the old city areas across Gujarat are specially being watched as they are most likely to be used for communication by suspicious elements before any terror attacks, the official added.