Journalism of Courage
A proposal to set up an Anti Terrorism Squad ATS of the Jharkhand Police has been pending for over two years now. The proposal is two-three years old. We wanted a force that would be based in Ranchi and headed by a DIG-rank officer, said DGP Rajeev Kumar.
We wanted more than 500 personnel in the ATS. The government did not agree,so it was reduced to 400. Two months back,the home secretary held a review meeting,where he asked that the number of proposed personnel be reduced to 200, said a source.
The proposal was re-drafted and sent to the home department again. The government must be delaying because there is a vacancy for 17,000 personnel in the police force. Instead of filling those vacancies,new recruitment should be made for the ATS, said the source.
When contacted,Home Secretary N N Pandey said,I have been in charge of this department for only five months now. This looks like a much-older file.
An ATS is absolutely essential to look at all the intelligence that is coming in from different sources and analyse it. Without it,we are essentially going from case to case,trusting our untrained Sub-Inspectors to do their jobs, said a Jharkhand Police officer.
While some of the suspects behind the Patna blasts are reported to be from Ranchi,terror links have surfaced in the past too. In January 2002,two individuals suspected of being involved in the attack on Kolkata8217;s American Center were shot dead in Hazaribagh. Similarly,the Madhya Pradesh police picked up Abu Faizal,a suspected SIMI member,from a hotel in Jamshedpur.
We have had incidents where modules operated in various locations Pakur,Jamtara,Giridih etc. Often,these men from outside the state come to stay with unsuspecting relatives after the attack, said ADGP S N Pradhan.
Suspected Lashkar member Ehtesham Malik,arrested in February 2012 in Delhi,was briefly in Hazaribagh,where his mother hails from. His cousin Tauseef Ahmad Pir was arrested from Hazaribagh. Manzar Imam and Danish Riyaz,both from Jharkhand,were also arrested for their alleged terror links earlier.
