No security breach at Narendra Modi's dinner for Ivanka Trump, say police

Telangana Police have denied that there was any security breach during the gala dinner that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had hosted for visiting US dignitary Ivanka Trump on November 28.

Local TV channels had aired live CCTV footage from Hyderabad's Falaknuma Palace Hotel showing Modi, Telangana CM K Chandrasekhar Rao and Governor ESL Narasimhan on a sofa talking to each another. The visuals were later picked up by national TV channels.

The event was out of bounds for media.

However, Telangana Police have clarified that there was no live streaming of the event but TV crew took shots of the video wall at the hotel's command and control room.

 "There was no live streaming. But TV channels were allowed in the control room and footage or a snippet of any routine event is often shared as part of our strategy for disseminating information to the public," said Telangana Police Commissioner V Srinivas Rao.

While the police are long used to reporters and camera crew inside the control room taking visuals of road accidents, robberies etc captured on CCTV across the city, they had not bargained for reporters using their proximity to the control room to take visuals of the dinner.

However, a new security protocol has now been put in place "on sharing visuals from command and control centre so as to ensure that only permitted visuals are shared on a need to share basis from now onwards", said a statement from the office of the Telangana DGP, M Mahender Reddy.

Police have meanwhile clarified that no action would taken against television channels.

Earlier Telangana Police were on their toes following a bomb hoax. A 60-year-old man was arrested for the hoax and he was described as mentally unstable by the police. The call, by the man who is a stone cutter and lives on the city's outskirts, was made on the police emergency number.

Falaknuma Palace was being monitored for the Global Entrepreneurship Summit 2017.

The hotel was under a five-tier security blanket with over 10,000 men on the ground, 150 CCTVs, the SPG and the US Secret Service. Which is why the Telangana Police said the force had exhibited immaculate professionalism and competence during the event. What they did not bargain for were TV crews and journalists who outwitted them with the footage of the event, even if from a video wall