NEW DELHI // As the Cricket World Cup enters its final stages, India's security agencies are preparing to assure that Pakistan's cricket team, playing their first match in India since 2007, stay safe.
Pakistan won their quarter-final game against the West Indies on Wednesday. Their next game, a semi-final against India, will be at Mohali, the first time they will have played in the tournament on Indian soil. Pakistan played their preliminary games in Sri Lanka.
The semi-final will also mark the first time since the 2008 terrorist attacks on Mumbai that a Pakistan team will play in India.
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If they win the match against India, who beat Australia in their quarter-final last night, Pakistan will go on to play the final on April 2 in Mumbai's Wankhede Stadium. Police have planned unprecedented security for the semi-final after intelligence agencies identified a possible terror plot targeting the game.
Pakistan's coach, Waqar Younis, told reporters after the quarter-final that the team had "no security concerns about going to India. It's good to go to a neighbouring country. I am happy to go to India".
Pakistan-based terrorists carried out the Mumbai attacks and cricketing ties, as well as diplomatic relationships, collapsed because of the violence.
Even before Pakistan were confirmed semi-finalists, security agencies had warned police in Mumbai about the threat of a terrorist attack on April 2.
One anonymous security agency source has been quoted in the media as saying that 17 World Cup final tickets had been bought by people who were linked to the Lashkar-i-Taiba and Jamaat-e-Ahle-Sunnat groups based in Pakistan.
Security in and around the Wankhede Stadium for the final will be extremely tight. Although organisers did not provide many details, they said the stadium would be staffed by at least 1,400 police personnel and quick-response teams. Ticket-holders will have to park far from the stadium and walk, possibly without mobile phones and other electronic items.
Police will also cordon off the roofs and balconies of the tallest buildings around the stadium to prevent attacks by paragliders.
More security personnel will line the route between the stadium and the Taj Mahal hotel, where teams will stay and one of the primary targets of the 2008 attacks by the Pakistani terrorists.
More police will be patrolling the coast. The 2008 terrorists landed in a dinghy on a Mumbai beach and began their attacks from there.
At the request of Pakistan's High Commissioner in India, Shahid Malik, the Indian home ministry will issue 5,000 more visas to Pakistanis coming to India for the semi-final and final. Such an influx of fans has proved difficult to handle.
When India granted visas to about 1,000 Pakistani cricket fans for a game in the state of Punjab in 2005, 11 of them were said to have gone missing after the match.
The Punjab police labelled the missing fans "a threat to the sovereignty and security of the nation".
Pakistan last played in Mumbai in 1989, at the city's Brabourne Stadium, and the last time the team played at Wankhede Stadium was in 1979.
The final's location in Mumbai is delicate for other reasons as well. A right-wing political party, the Shiv Sena, has long opposed India's cricketing ties with Pakistan.
In 2001, when cricket authorities were trying to revive games between the countries, a Shiv Sena leader named Jai Bhagwan Goel said: "When Pakistan is actively supporting and training foreign mercenaries in its land and then exporting them to Kashmir for spreading terrorism, how can we have any cricketing or any other sporting ties with it?"
Even before the World Cup began in February, a Shiv Sena spokesman had issued a statement about the possibility of Pakistan playing the final in Mumbai. "You all know Sena chief Bal Thackeray's views," Manohar Joshi, a Shiv Sena leader, told the Press Trust of India. "If the Pakistan team reach the final, whether to allow them to play, the Sena chief will decide."
The Shiv Sena has, in the past, resorted to vandalism to prevent games featuring Pakistan. In 1991, members dug up a playing surface at the Wankhede Stadium to scuttle a game; the act was repeated in 1999, at the Feroze Shah Kotla stadium in New Delhi.
In a column in the party mouthpiece newsletter, Saamna, Mr Thackeray called the destruction of the New Delhi surface an act of "true patriotism".
ssubramanian@thenational.ae
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How to protect yourself when air quality drops
Install an air filter in your home.
Close your windows and turn on the AC.
Shower or bath after being outside.
Wear a face mask.
Stay indoors when conditions are particularly poor.
If driving, turn your engine off when stationary.
