New Delhi: Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Thursday asked the anti-terrorism agencies to adopt a ruthless approach against terrorists so that a new terrorist organization cannot be formed.
“Anti-terrorism agencies must adopt a ruthless approach so that a new terrorist organization cannot be formed. The task of NIA, ATS, and STF should not be limited to investigation but they should also think out of the box and take innovative measures to counter-terrorism,” said Shah while inaugurating the two-day anti-terror conference organized by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in New Delhi.
Stating that under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Central and State agencies have succeeded in firmly curbing all forms of terrorism in the country in the last 9 years, Shah said, “Model Anti-terrorism Structure should be established under the purview of NIA, the hierarchy, structure, and SoPs of Investigation of all anti-terrorism agencies in all states should be made uniform for better coordination between central and state agencies.”
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At the @NIA_India 3rd Anti-Terror Conference 2023 held today, HM Shri @AmitShah spoke about collective Team India approach adopted by govt to tackle terrorism. He said efforts are under way to bring about uniformity in the structures and training of anti-terror agencies. pic.twitter.com/e73PE557LA
— NIA India (@NIA_India) October 5, 2023 " class="align-text-top noRightClick twitterSection" data="
">At the @NIA_India 3rd Anti-Terror Conference 2023 held today, HM Shri @AmitShah spoke about collective Team India approach adopted by govt to tackle terrorism. He said efforts are under way to bring about uniformity in the structures and training of anti-terror agencies. pic.twitter.com/e73PE557LA
— NIA India (@NIA_India) October 5, 2023At the @NIA_India 3rd Anti-Terror Conference 2023 held today, HM Shri @AmitShah spoke about collective Team India approach adopted by govt to tackle terrorism. He said efforts are under way to bring about uniformity in the structures and training of anti-terror agencies. pic.twitter.com/e73PE557LA
— NIA India (@NIA_India) October 5, 2023
He said that the fight against terrorism requires collaboration from the global level to the grassroots, involving various states within the country, as well as international cooperation. “The fight against terrorism requires collaboration from the global level to the grassroots, involving various states within the country, as well as international cooperation,” he said.
Shah said that his government has taken a tough stand on all the challenges like crypto, hawala, terror-funding, organized crime syndicates, narco-terror links, which has yielded very good results, but still, a lot more is to be done. “To deal with terrorism, the Centre and the states, their agencies and inter-agency cooperation will have to think in vertical and horizontal ways,” said Shah.
The Home Minister said that the central government has prepared many database verticals in the last 5 years. “All the agencies of the Centre and the State should make multidimensional and Artificial Intelligence-based use of the database, only then will we be successful in the fight against terrorism. The database should be used for investigation, prosecution, prevention and action. Every police station as well as young police officers make maximum use of the database,” said Shah.
Giving statistics on the use of databases, Shah said that Inter-Operable Criminal Justice System (ICJS) - CCTNS implemented in 99.93 percent i.e. 16,733 police stations, 22,000 courts have been connected to e-Court and about 2 crore prisoner data available through e-Prison, 1 crore through e-Prosecution. More than 17 lakh prosecution data are available and more than 17 lakh forensic data from e-forensics.
Similarly, the National Automated Fingerprint Identification System (NAFIS) has more than 90 lakh fingerprint records. Under Integrated Monitoring of Terrorism (i-MoT), data of 22 thousand terrorist cases is available for monitoring UAPA registered cases. Data of more than 5 lakh narco-offenders is available under NIDAN, i.e. National Integrated Database on Arrested Narco-Offenders.
He said that data of about 1 lakh human traffickers is available under the National Database of Human Trafficking Offenders (NDHTO). Data of more than 14 lakh alerts is available under the Crime Multi Agency Center (Cri-MAC). Data from more than 28 lakh complaints is available on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal (NCRP). A biometric database of prisoners and information about their visitors is available in the Prison Database. Apart from this, the national-level terrorism database of the NIA is also available. Shah said that there should be a common training module for all central and state-level counter-terrorism agencies so that uniformity can be brought in the methodology of fighting against terrorism.
He asked the NIA and IB to take the initiative in this direction. Shah said that now the time has come to work from the need to know to need to share and the duty to share approach. Shah said that the number of terrorist incidents in the year 2001 was 6000, which the government at the centre led by Modi has reduced to 900 in the year 2022.
He praised the NIA for achieving more than 94 percent conviction rate and said more work is needed in this direction. He also asked all the states to take steps to increase the conviction rate. Referring to the fight against drugs, Shah said that in cooperation with the Central and State Governments, major successes have been achieved in the fight against drugs.
“These achievements include Operation Samudragupta, conducted this year under the leadership of NCB, during which narcotics worth more than Rs 12,000 crore were seized simultaneously. Apart from this, 10 lakh kilograms of drugs have also been disposed of,” Shah said. Shah said that terrorism has no boundaries and no state can face terrorism alone. He said that "we all have to come together to root out this evil".
The Home Minister suggested making five actionable points in every session of the two-day conference and sending them to the Union Home Ministry. Talking about the situation in J&K, Shah said that the situation has improved a lot. Shah said that in the last nine years, J&K has been witnessing an era of peace and development.
“Between 2014-2023, J&K witnessed a 70 percent decrease in terror-related incidents in comparison to 2004-14. The casualties of civilian and security forces registered a 69 percent decrease. 2829 casualties of civilians and security forces in 2004-2014 in comparison to 891 in 2014-2023,” he said. Shah said that civilian killings also witnessed an 81 percent decrease in J&K. “1769 civilians killed in 2004-2014 whereas 336 died in terror-related incidents in 2014-2023,” Shah said.
He said that casualty of security forces has also witnessed 48 percent decrease from 1060 in 2004-2014 to 555 in 2014-2023. Minister of State for Home Affairs Nishith Pramanik, Home Secretary, Director Intelligence Bureau, Director General NIA, as well as Director Generals of Central Armed Police Forces, State Police Chiefs, and senior officials from the Union and State governments were also present in the conference.
During the day, Shah awarded medals to NIA officials for excellence in service. Dismantling of terror ecosystem, good practice in terror investigations, terror funding trends and countermeasures, the use of UAPA and other legal provisions to counter terror and crime, as well as harvesting investive intelligence through digital forensics and data analytics are among five topics to be discussed in the two-day Anti-Terror Conference 2023.
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