Inform us of fake currency, terror cases: Centre to States

NEW DELHI: The Centre will soon insist upon all states to immediately inform the Union Home Ministry whenever it lodges any case pertaining to terrorism or fake currency so as the Centre can take a call on transferring such probes to the National Investigation Agency (NIA).

The move may rile the states, especially the BJP-ruled ones, given the past acrimony over Centre’s attempts to ‘disturb’ the federal structure with moves like the National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC), which has since been shelved. A NIA official told ET that many states were not informing the Centre about cases registered by them under the scheduled offences of the NIA Act despite this being a mandatory requirement under Section 6 of the NIA Act.

“Many states are not doing so despite being advised again and again by the Centre...this leads to many cases simply not being on the Centre’s radar. The states feel that by sending all information to the Centre, NIA may take over all cases and the state police anti-terrorism units may be rendered redundant,” the officer said.





The Centre till lately has followed the conservative methodology of taking the concurrence of the state government before transferring a probe to the NIA though Section 6 of the NIA Act gives Centre the power to suo-moto transfer any investigation of a scheduled offence to the NIA. The Home Ministry faced problems with Madhya Pradesh government in the past over the transfer of the murder case of RSS worker Sunil Joshi to the NIA as the state government was not keen on the same. “Law and order is a state subject though the NIA Act does give Centre the power to take over a terror case. The NIA Act will be strictly enforced now,” the official said.

The Centre is calling a meeting of DGPs of various states in the last week of September to “sensitize” them of provisions of NIA Act and will insist on them to share information on each terror case with the Centre so that NIA can be involved.

A government officer said the matter had created an alarming situation recently when even the Delhi Police did not inform the Home Ministry of two cases registered by it under the Scheduled offences of the NIA Act. “This led to long litigation and the two cases could be barely saved,” the officer said. The Ministry will impress upon the states that sharing of information on each case with the Centre will also lead to compilation of data on all terror cases will be helpful for everyone. An official pointed out that many a time, the state does not inform the Centre simply because it does not want the probe to be transferred to the central agency, NIA. As per Section 6 of the NIA Act, every state government is mandated to forward the report of a terror case to the Centre as expeditiously as possible with the latter then determining whether, having regard to the gravity of the offence, it is a fit case to be investigated by the NIA.