MUMBAI - THE devastating attacks on Mumbai show that the Indian financial capital urgently needs a more modern police force and better intelligence resources, according to former officers and security experts.

The Indian intelligence community has faced outspoken criticism in the wake of last week's attacks, which left at least 188 people dead, amid allegations that warning signs were ignored and anti-terrorist forces were slow to respond.

'There has been a complete deficiency of local and police intelligence,' said Mr Ajai Sahni, executive director with the Institute of Conflict Management, a non-profit internal security group based in the capital New Delhi.

'National intelligence is paper-thin, and despite repeated attacks, we have not learnt our lessons,' Mr Sahni said.

Some experts have questioned whether Mumbai's understaffed and under-resourced police should even be used to tackle militant attacks, arguing that regular officers lack the training required to take on armed extremists.

Maharashtra state has a 125,000-strong police force for a population of over 100 million, according to official figures, or one officer to every 800 people.

And where previous assaults involved bombs being left in public places, as in 2006 when Islamist militants staged serial attacks on Mumbai's trains that killed 186 people, this time the militants engaged directly with police.

State police were the first on the scene in Wednesday's attacks, and several top officers were shot dead in the initial assault. It took hundreds of specially-trained anti-terrorist commandos 60 hours to contain the attackers.

'There should be an independent security agency to tackle terror' for the city, said Mr M N Singh, a former Mumbai police chief.

'The police are not trained to tackle sophisticated terror attacks. They should be used as secondary staff to deal with rioting, law and order issues,' he said.

Former police officer A.A. Khan said Mumbai could begin by expanding the powers of its existing police anti-terror squad (ATS), getting them better equipment, improving the quality of recruits and training top officers.

'The ATS needs specialised weapons and physical training,' said Khan, well known in India for his clashes with Mumbai's criminal underworld.

Another former officer said that more of the police budget needed to be spent on frontline anti-terrorist capability.

Instead, local reports have said that almost two-thirds of the 9.4 billion rupees (S$287.15 million) the state spent on police modernisation in the last eight years went on new buildings and luxury cars.

'We had adequate funds but never upgraded our firepower to tackle terror attacks,' the senior officer told the Times of India daily. 'That was why we were helpless when terrorists attacked Mumbai on Wednesday.'

Making the most of existing intelligence should also be a priority, the local media has urged.

Reports have said that fishermen in Mumbai warned state government officials in September that they suspected explosives and weapons were being brought in along the city's long coastline.

'We had expected that immediate inquiries would be made,' said Damodar Tandel, head of Maharashtra's fishermen's union, according to a report in the DNA daily on Monday.

'But the terror attack suggests no one took it seriously.'

Investigators were believed to be probing the possibility that the well-equipped gunmen had entered Mumbai by boat.

But increasingly, local informants like the fishermen are not coming forward, either because their warnings are ignored or because they perceive the police as being too close to local politicians, experts said.

'People are insecure of passing on information to the police,' said former officer Khan. 'We need to bridge the gap between the police and public.' -- AFP

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