Reporting suspicious activity

Rush08

Today my husband was traveling from Mumbai to Pune by the fancy highway and noticed a man on the side of the highway wearing a hooded shirt and taking pictures of the tunnel. Photography of the tunnels is strictly prohibited.

I feel that since the attacks in Mumbai, we should be more diligent citizens. Is there any agency that we should report this incident too?

Thanks.

capt_mahajan

There was a four digit number advertised in the papers but I have forgotten it.

1040? Nah.


One could always tell the cops. The more senior the better.

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Outside the machine

edwardseco

Maybe it was 911..

Haylo

It has been a while since I was at school, but I'm pretty sure that is only three numbers

Joking apart, given the prevalence of mobiles in India, if there is some sort of hotline it could be quite effective at alerting the authorities of suspicious behaviour.

That only works however, if the number is either memorable or continuously publicised - for instance printing it in the corner of every newspaper front page.

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Wanderer22

Lets not go overboard here. I frequent a number of photography forums on the web and have seen quite a number of reports of this sort of paranoia. There seems to be a mindset that anyone who photographs stuff other than sunsets and pets is automatically a terrorist.

Did the hooded shirt look like this one by any chance?
http://focus52.blogspot.com/2008/03/...terrorist.html

Found the above while googleing ... paranoia + photographers + terrorism, (got 217000 hits)

W22

Nick-H

This is rife in UK, where photographers are often assailed by 'security' staff who have no knowledge of the law at all.

capt_mahajan

On ze other hand...

If people had reported suspicious activity when odd things were happening on the Mumbai coast that night- or if authorities had taken them seriously when they did report (fishermen did, earlier)...

And if authorities had taken warnings in the US seriously about guys interested in learning to fly planes but not interested in taking off or landing, all those years ago...


Hindsight is perfect.

livinhimalayas

The PCR number across India is 100 for all emergencies. You can also give an anonymous tip if you don;t want to divulge your identity. We did it once on a car and it turned out we were right there were three wanted sikh militant in the car. This was prior to Operation Blue Star.

Rush08

Photography of the tunnels on the mumbai pune highway is forbidden for a reason. Photography enthusiasts should not ignore that rule.

JamesW

Soon after the Mumbai incident, Pune police sent SMS messages to mobiles. They said to inform the police on 100, or Pune 26122880.

A quick search on flickr suggests that that particular law is as strictly adhered to as any other law in India!

Haylo

As images of this and most other structures are widely available online, I question whether this law is worth enforcing.

Photographing bridges is still illegal, but I have already done so, in order to show colleagues back home. Fortunately, I don't think that I look like a particularly suspicious type...

edwardseco

I don't know Haylo, I like your posts so that probably puts you in the "don't fly" category..

arijitchaki

The number in this case would be 9832098320. This is the emergency number shown on all the signs on the Pune-Mumbai expressway. But this is for the expressway specifically.

snonymous

There were recent reports about the Asian origin Muslim group of US citizens who were summarily off loaded from a flight in the US and subjected to gruelling interrogation, based merely on the "suspicions" of fellow passengers.

As Haylo observes, images of just about everything are easily available online today, and you can view so called "sensitive" installations such as the nuclear power plant at Trombay quite clearly on Google Earth.

Prohibitions about photography are really archaic.