Local thanas’ role key in fighting terror: Mumbai Police have Anti Terror Cells at all police stations since 2012

Mumbai Police Commissioner Deven Bharti told The Indian Express, “We have Anti Terror Cells (ATCs) at every police station for monitoring suspicious activities that take place in their jurisdiction. Since local police stations are well-connected to people in their jurisdiction, they are better placed to get information at the local level.”

Years after the 26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai, the then Mumbai Police Joint Commissioner (Law & Order) and, incidentally, the current NIA chief probing the Red Fort blast case, Sadanand Date, had in 2012 mooted a proposal to start ATCs at the over 90 city police stations that were to primarily focus on looking out for suspicious activity in their respective jurisdictions.

An officer said, “It could be keeping an eye on people trying to get a SIM card using fake documents or someone suspicious moving into a building or someone going missing from an area or looking at suspicious organisations registered in the jurisdictions.”

While Maharashtra has its ATS and other agencies like the Intelligence Bureau (IB), the Special Branch (SB), it was felt that a dedicated local intelligence collection unit capable of reading the pulse of the city and collecting ground level intelligence was needed in the aftermath of the terror attack, the officer said.

After the proposal was accepted, in the next few years, a team of four–five officers headed by an inspector-rank officer at every police station were trained in gathering intelligence and other aspects on what to look out for in their respective jurisdiction.

Rather than these officers trained to specifically take on terror being roped in to perform all duties from maintaining law and order to working in crime detections, which they do whenever the need arises, their roles are defined and there is clarity on what is expected of them, an officer said.

The officer added that when three youngsters from the Malwani area of Malad went missing in December 2015 suspected to have joined terror outfit Islamic State (IS), it was the local police station ATC that came to know about it first following which the information was passed on to other agencies.

Such has been the success of the Mumbai Police ATCs that in December 2019, the Delhi Police sent its officers to Mumbai to see the functioning of the ATCs. Taking inspiration from it after seeing its efficacy, the then Delhi Police Commissioner Amulya Patnaik too had started ATCs there to improve ground level intelligence gathering.

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