Intelligence sharing vital to check terror: Experts

Kuldeep Chauhan

Tribune News Service

Shimla April 21

Top police experts from the state and central law enforcement and investigating agencies today chalked out that increased coordination and intelligence sharing among different agencies was a must for checking terror and drug infiltration.

Addressing a closed-door meeting of the northern region police coordination committee, which was attended by top police officials from Himachal, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand and Delhi, here today, Himachal DGP Sanjay Kumar said, “There is a need for greater coordination among various state police organisations and central law enforcement agencies to address these issues”.

The police officers agreed that to check terror-related infiltration and radicalisation of the youth, they need to keep a tab on refugees in various parts of northern India.

They needed a coordinated mechanism to check foreigners, who overstayed their visas mainly in the cannabis havens of Kullu-Manali, Dharamsala and other parts and they need to check the misuse of social media as well.

To check the spread of drug cartels, the police needed to take investigation of drug recovery to logical conclusion by doing financial investigation to break the economic backbone of the smugglers in the region. The properties gained from illegal drug trade need to be seized, the experts asserted.

They agreed that the police needed new methods to check the involvement of foreigners in drug trade. For this, all states needed to share intelligence reports to reduce trans-border movement of drugs, the officers said.

IGP, Southern Range, Zahur Haider Zaidi said it was deliberated that the police and enforcement agencies needed to develop new methods to tackle online frauds, misuse of cyber space and abuse on social media. For this, intelligence sharing and transfer of information needed to be strengthened, he added.