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Sharat Pradhan in Lucknow
Following the terrorist attacks on the Akshardham temple in Gujarat and the Raghunath temple in Jammu, the government was thinking of banning all flights over Ayodhya, a top intelligence official in Uttar Pradesh said on Wednesday.
"With religious places turning into targets of terrorist outfits, we have to intensify the security in and around Ayodhya," he told rediff.com on condition of anonymity.
"Exchange of messages between terrorists clearly indicate that Ayodhya is very much on their list," he said.
A proposal to ban flights over Ayodhya was made in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks in the United States, but things did not go much further.
He said, "The situation is now ripe to review the security of each of the contentious shrines in the state -- Ayodhya, Mathura and Varanasi."
He lamented that the Union government had failed to take a decision on introducing marshals on all flights. The idea was mooted at the United Nations Security Council meeting that followed the September 11 attacks. Even earlier, when IC-814 was hijacked and taken to Afghanistan, the government had thought of deploying marshals.
The Ayodhya Issue: The Complete Coverage
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