Learning lessons from the 26/11 terror attack, police has formed special squads in all the 90 police stations in the city to collect inputs in a bid to strenthen its intelligence gathering.

This is for the first time that squads have been formed for intelligence gathering at police station level.

A team of four -- sub-inspector and three constables -- has been formed in every police station and assigned the task of collecting information and updating joint commissioner of police (law and order), Rajnish Seth.

Seth, after getting such information, would in turn brief the city police chief D Sivanandan.

"The idea of setting up such squads was to strengthen the intelligence gathering. These cops would regularly collect information and neutralise threat, besides doing other police station related jobs as and when required," Sivanandan told PTI.

The city has 90 police stations which has been divided into five zones. These squads would be consistently working on cultivating their informants, gathering information and updating their superiors.

This would help police in preventing any untoward incident, the Police Commissioner said.

At present, crime branch and special branches are involved in information gathering. However, following the 26/11 attack a need was felt to make more stronger the network of intelligence gathering and thus the idea emerged to form squads in police stations, Sivanandan said.

Besides city police, State Intelligence Department and Central agencies including Intelligence Bureau (IB) are working at grassroot level to collect intelligence inputs.

Months after the Mumbai terror attacks, the city police had also formed Quick Response Teams (QRT) to rescue hostages and render assistance to Central forces and other state forces in case of any untoward incident.

Following the attacks, police had also procured high end weapons such AK-47s, MP9 Machine Gun, MP5 Machine Gun, COLT M 4 guns, Armed troop carrier, bullet proof vehicles, speed boats and Amphibious boats.