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The director-general of Maharashtra Police has posted on Facebook plugging the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) and invited officers who would like a posting to meet him.
The ATS chief has written to the state government seeking more manpower for the squad.
Sources told The Indian Express that ATS chief Vineet Agarwal told Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Manu Kumar Shrivastava that several positions, including four key ones, had been lying vacant at his unit for quite some time, and asked for them to be filled at the earliest.
Officers not keen on Maharashtra ATS, top cop posts FB invite
In his post on Facebook, DGP Sanjay Pandey said that a posting with the ATS could get an officer 25 per cent extra salary by way of allowances. He asked officers to express their willingness on his wall, or to meet him or Agarwal.
But there has not been much enthusiasm to join the ATS.
Several current and former ATS officers said the state anti-terror unit has lost some of its sheen over the past few years as the federal National Investigation Agency (NIA) has taken over some of the most sensitive and talked-about cases it was investigating.
Also, senior officers said, the constant tussle between the governments at the Centre and the state has cast a shadow, and complicated the functioning of the ATS.
Agarwal, who heads the ATS, is an officer of the rank of additional DG. The post occupied by former ATS IG Suhas Warke has been vacant ever since the officer was transferred almost a year ago. DIG Shivdeep Lande was repatriated to Bihar on November 26; his position too is yet to be filled. There are two vacancies for posts of superintendents of police (SP) as well.
Rajkumar Shinde, an SP-rank officer, is holding charge of all four positions. “Shinde was transferred to the Anti Corruption Bureau some time ago, but he has not been relieved as there are hardly any senior officers in the unit,” an official said.
Agarwal declined to comment on the vacancies in his unit. A senior Maharashtra Police official, however, said the vacant positions would be filled soon.
In recent years, the ATS has seen its cases related to the Islamic State terrorist organisation — including those involving youths from Kalyan in 2014 and Malwani in 2015 — transferred to the NIA within days or weeks.
The ATS had completed investigations in the 2006 and 2008 bombings in Malegaon, and filed chargesheets before the cases were taken from it.
“Even in the Ambani terror threat case and the case where uranium was retrieved from accused persons, the investigations passed to the NIA, inspite of good work by the ATS,” a former ATS officer said. “It is highly demotivating for officers who have put in effort to have to simply hand over these cases (to the central agency).”
According to this officer, the charter of the NIA and ATS being broadly similar, they operate in the same space of terrorism and fake currency. Also, he said, “when the same party is in government in both the Centre and the state, there is a level of understanding — this is currently not the case”.
A former ATS chief pointed out that given officers do not interact much with the public, the levels of enthusiasm of senior officers generally play a role in determining how enthusiastic juniors are about joining the unit.
Another former ATS officer said that earlier, the squad had a crunch of assistant commissioners as well, but that situation has now improved.
Maharashtra was the first state to have an ATS following the blasts of 1998, 2000, and 2002 in Mumbai, and serial bombings elsewhere in the country. A similar unit that had been set up earlier in the 1990s was revived on August 22, 2004 with K P Raghuvanshi as its chief.
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