Agra, June 15 (IANS) Security around the Taj Mahal is to be beefed up in the wake of a renewed terrorist threat to the world's most famous monument to love.

"The recent security review necessitated enhancement of security all around Taj Mahal", Agra Senior Superintendent of Police Dipesh Juneja told IANS.

"The security review of the monument was a routine affair and this time intelligence inputs indicated a renewed militant threat to the monument.

"We have already deployed additional cops at various strategic points around the monument, and we were drawing up a fresh plan for laying a beefed-up security net around the periphery of the monument," he said.

"At present, the main security focus is on the vast open rear side overlooking the Yamuna river and Mehtab Bagh, from where infiltration could be made quite easily," the police officer said.

Juneja has taken the government's sanction for additional deployment of 300 additional cops to beef up security around Taj. Directives have also been issued to light up the area around Taj Mahal so as to ensure vigil at night.

"The special contingent of 300 police personnel would be exclusively devoted to the external security of the monument on the same lines as had been done for the disputed shrines in Ayodhya, Mathura and Varanasi," he said.

The security arrangements of the monument that draws millions of tourists from different corners of the globe was in the hands of a private agency hired by Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) until 2002. The state police maintained round-the-clock vigil on the peripheral area including the three outer gates.

However, following a threat by a Kashmiri militant group to blow up the monument, the central and state governments jointly decided to entrust Taj security to the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF).

Picture souce: Flash THis