Written By: Reshmi Dasgupta

News18.com

Last Updated: July 16, 2024, 09:30 IST

New Delhi, India

Republican candidate Donald Trump is seen with blood on his face surrounded by secret service agents as he is taken off the stage at a campaign event at Butler Farm Show Inc. in Pennsylvania on July 13. (Image: Rebecca DROKE/AFP)

Some 24 years ago, we invited the then Deputy Prime Minister LK Advani to our home in New Delhi for a meal. His security team came over a week before to assess the threat level. We were asked who else would attend. We mentioned that there were just two more guests for the evening: Narendra Modi and Arun Jaitley. Back then their threat perception was not judged to be that high, so the security team promptly got down to work accordingly to ‘sanitise’ our house.

The house was inspected by sniffer dogs and men with mysterious gadgets. Every single rooftop and balcony with a clear line of sight to our house was surveyed and at least one security personnel placed there. Our own roof had several of them. Vendors and parked cars in the vicinity were removed. The service lane in the rear was cleared of all movable objects. Even the drivers of the taxi stand opposite our house were asked to park their cabs elsewhere for a day.

The dinner went off without incident, but it did lead to much speculation in the neighbourhood about why there was such a security cordon in the area. As the DPM’s cavalcade came and went very unobtrusively, people concluded that a terrorist cell had surely been busted there. And the paanwala returned to his spot on the pavement near our house the next day and authoritatively told his clientele that a large cache of arms had been unearthed in the service........

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