The Union government has accorded a security cover of armed Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) commandos for the Hyderabad premises of Bharat Biotech, one of the major COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers in the country. Officials said that the registered office and plant of the company located at Genome Valley in the Shameerpet area of Telangana’s capital city will be secured by a team of 64 armed personnel of the paramilitary force.
Sources say that the Union Home Ministry recently sanctioned a proposal to deploy CISF at this facility, following which the force 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,” an official said.
Bharat Biotech is the manufacturer of COVID-19 vaccine, named Covaxin. India at present is administering two locally manufactured vaccines — Covaxin and Covishield, and the latter is being manufactured by the Pune-based Serum Institute of India, which already enjoys the security cover from CISF.
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 several 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.
