IM threat looming,Bihar Police plans to roll out its own ATS

Police teams from outside Bihar arrested four suspected IM operatives from Barh Samaila village of Darbhanga alone in 2011 and 2012. After the arrest of Ghayur Jamali from Madhubani in 2011,there was a spurt of arrests of suspected IM operatives in the state. About a dozen IM operatives from the state have been arrested in the past three years.

A top police source said: An NIA Delhi team in a monthly meeting with IB,CRPF,CISF,Ramp;W,DRI,Income Tax,DRI and military intelligence impressed upon the state government for immediate need of setting up Bihar ATS on patterns of similar units in other states.

With top IM leaders reportedly having stayed in Bihar from 2000 and 2003 and coming here in subsequent years for indoctrination and recruitment,the NIA officials said the Bihar government immediately needed its ATS to tackle terrorism.

Whenever there is a terror attack,it is state ATS that gets cracking first,the national investigating agency takes over at a later stage, said an official,adding that NIA teams had visited Bihar over a dozen times in last one-and-a-half years.

A Bihar government official added that ATS would work on the pattern of the Special Task Force,already in place to deal with anti-Naxal operations.