The Hindu : Other States News : The battle is still on… Law & order

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Saturday, Nov 24, 2007
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The battle is still on… Law & order

Lack of facilities in our police force shows that our fight against terrorism is far from over, says Devesh K. Pandey

Friday’s serial blasts in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh are a grim reminder of the fact that the battle against terror is far from over. The terrorist strikes have also exposed shortcomings in the intelligence and police networks. But a large number of police officers still believe that with some coordinated action, proper planning, profiling and use of technology the battle can be won.

To begin with, there is hardly any specialised training programme at present to groom police personnel for counter-terrorism operations. What they have today are training sessions which, according to many police officers, do not completely cover all aspects of such operations, particularly preventive techniques.

Given the fact that terrorist outfits have been using high-tech communication gadgets to evade detection, it is a pity that most police personnel involved in the operations do not have the requisite technical expertise to handle the investigations efficiently. For instance, they are not well equipped to track the activities of suspects on the Internet. While the Delhi police have the wherewithal to conduct high-precision electronic surveillance, senior officers say that their counterparts in neighbouring States are not so lucky. They mostly depend on Central agencies to carry out investigations.

Another matter of concern is lack of adequate compensation for the policemen who put their lives at risk during the operations. Several police personnel have to spend months, and often years, developing human intelligence at faraway places. But there is no provision for incentives to encourage them. Intelligence agencies, however, have “risk incentives” for their field officers.

The declining standards of human intelligence gathering are another problem area that requires urgent attention. Some police officers feel that productive inputs can be gathered at the police station level, for which the police station staff has to be sensitised properly and trained in various techniques of intelligence gathering.

A major concern of the police officers here is that there is no desired level of coordination between the enforcement agencies of different States when it comes to intelligence sharing. In most cases, the operations become a means to get promotions and publicity.

Police officers feel that if the authorities are genuinely committed to fighting terror, it is high time they set up a centralised unit having the mandate to carry out both pro-active and post-incident probes into terrorist attacks anywhere in the country. Formulation of a comprehensive training programme for policemen for counter-terrorism operations would also be of great help.

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