NEW DELHI: The Union home ministry has stressed the need to strengthen micro-level intelligence at the police station level to counter the changed scenario of security threats.
A note prepared by the ministry said a group of ministers, which reviewed national security concerns, laid emphasis on reorganisation of state special branches "to meet the new genre of internal security threats, most of them having an external dimension."
These challenges to internal security include concerted efforts being made "by hostile intelligence agencies to subvert vulnerable sections of society, organised criminal gangs, terrorist outfits, gun runners, and hawala racketeers."
The old scenario of jehadis from Pakistan and Kashmir coming into India and carrying out attacks is no more the formula.
The terrorist organisations or their mentors based in Pakistan and elsewhere send in a person, possibly a Bangladeshi or a Pakistani, who takes shelter in a safe locality in India and works on locals, motivating them to carry out the attacks.
Some of the recent attacks reflect the success of such missions. The other trend noticed in the attack on the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, on December 28 last year and in the suicide attack in Hyderabad earlier was the involvement of Indian expatriates in the Gulf region. Expatriates who are won over by terrorist groups are sent back home to create terror modules.
The expatriate motivator comes home to create a small group that is willing to travel to Bangladesh, or Nepal, and from there to terrorist camps for training and return home as terror modules.
The Home Ministry note said this made imperative the collection, compilation and analysis of raw intelligence and information by state special branches with a network of intelligence units at the district level.
However, at present, "intelligence work at police station level has virtually come to a halt," the note said.
The MHA noted the reluctance of officers and other staff to be posted in special branches and said the states would need to provide some incentives and specialised training to police personnel to be posted in special branches with a stable tenure of at least three years.
