NEW DELHI: The government has decided to accord Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) security cover to the Hyderabad-based campus of Bharat Biotech, one of the major Covid-19 vaccine manufacturers in the country, official sources said.
They said a decision in this regard was taken after a review meeting of the security experts in the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and accordingly the CISF has been informed to prepare accordingly.
The official sources said, the registered office and plant of the company located at Genome Valley in the Shameerpet area of Hyderabad will be secured by “a team of 64 armed personnel of the paramilitary force”. For this purpose the CISF has already carried out a survey.
“The organisation is an important facility when it comes to ensuring medical and health security of the country and it obviously faces a terror threat from various inimical elements. The CISF, hence, has been tasked to secure the Bharat Biotech facility in Hyderabad,” a senior MHA official said.
A spokesperson for CISF said, the force “will be inducted at the facility, which manufactures Covaxin, on June 14”.
India at present is administering Covaxin and Covishield (manufactured by the Pune-based Serum Institute of India), apart from small doses of Sputnik V to its citizens to battle the coronavirus pandemic.
The CISF was allowed to secure private installations of public importance following the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, where five-star luxury hotels and a Jewish Chabad house were targeted by members of the Pakistan-based terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba.
The force guards about 10 such facilities across the country, including the Infosys campuses in Pune and Mysuru, the Reliance IT Park in Navi Mumbai and Yoga exponent Ramdev’s Patanjali factory premises in Uttarakhand’s Haridwar.