Plans afoot to have NIA home in Patna

NEW DELHI: The home ministry is working on plans to establish an office of the National Investigation Agency in Patna to bust modules of the Indian Mujahideen in Bihar, its thinking seemingly motivated by what it feels is the Bihar government’s reluctance to aggressively go after the terror group. Union Home Secretary Anil Goswami on Tuesday asked officials to explore the prospect of opening an NIA office in Patna, a senior official said, adding the directive was prompted by recent bomb blasts together with revelations of the existence of IM modules in the state and neighbouring Jharkhand.

NIA already has regional offices in Mumbai, Hyderabad, Kochi, Guwahati and Lucknow. Last year, it had proposed having an office in Patna, but the proposal did not move ahead during the tenure of the then home secretary RK Singh. “The proposal has again been reactivated after the Patna blasts,” a top ministry official said. Minister of State for Home RPN Singh told ET that “if NIA is keen to open an office in Patna, we will take a call on it”.

The MHA officials said they were increasingly getting the feeling that Bihar was not serious in hunting for IM cadres in areas such as Samastipur, Darbhanga and Madhubani because of political considerations. “The Bihar Police caught Imtiaz Ansari alive at the Patna railway station and he had spilled the names of all accused to them. They could have virtually cracked the case, but Chief Minister Nitish Kumar still asked for the case to be transferred to the NIA,” a top MHA official said.

Former home secretary RK Singh said although there were IM modules active in the state and the IM chief involved in Patna blasts — Tehseen Akhtar — was from Samastipur, Bihar Police had never kept an eye on these modules. “Bihar never nabbed any of the IM terrorists. In fact when other agencies like NIA arrested terrorists from Bihar, the state government objected. This was very strange...,” Singh said.