New Delhi, Oct 6 (IANS): Anti-Terror Conference, a two-day event hosted by the National Investigation Agency (NIA), concluded in New Delhi on Friday.
During the conference, the NIA, along with Anti-Terror Squads (ATS) and Counter-Terrorism (CT) units from various states, pledged to enhance collaborative efforts among central and state intelligence, security, and law enforcement agencies.
Their goal is to combat the menace of terrorism in the country, with a particular emphasis on dismantling the entire terror ecosystem and cutting off its sources of funding.
The key directions given by the Home Minister and Minister of Cooperation Amit Shah while inaugurating the 3rd Anti-Terror Conference on Thursday, included design of a common training module, multidimensional use of the various national databases to investigate, prosecute, and prevent crimes, innovative measures to counter terrorism, sharing of good practices, international cooperation and challenges like crypto, hawala, terror-funding, organised crime syndicates, and narco-terror links.
He said that all anti-terrorism agencies must adopt such a ruthless approach so that a new terrorist organisation cannot be formed.
Chairing the concluding session, Home Secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla underlined the need for teamwork and collaborative and concerted efforts by central and state agencies to try and prevent the establishment of terror ecosystems.
Bhalla assured full support from the Home Ministry for meeting with needs of the central and state agencies in terms of legislative requirements, financial management, or resource deployment to fight against terrorism.
Officers from around 15 States made presentations at the two days conference including Uttar Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Tamil Nadu, Assam, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Delhi Police, Punjab, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Kerala.
In the session on ‘Terror Funding –Trends & Counter Measures’, participants from states and central agencies, including FIU-India and ED discussed the recent trends in terror financing that have emerged in the investigation of cases.
The officers stressed upon the effective use of FIN-TECH solutions for analysis of funding pattern.
In the session on Digital Forensics and Data Analytics, delegates from Karnataka, DFSS, NCRB, NATGRID, BSF, I4C shared their experiences and showed the way forward on this important aspect of terror investigations, besides use of platforms/modules, such as iMOT, NATGRID and the National Terrorism Database.
The session on “Dismantling of Terror Ecosystem” saw detailed discussions inter alia by police officers on leveraging of technology and working on foreign nodes to unearth the complex linkages between terrorism and trans-national organised crime.