Inter-state coordination taken up at NIA meet

Coordination among the states in view of inter-state arrests and tracking down terrorist activities, where the operations spanned over various states or accused were involved in subversive activities, were debated during the meet, Karnataka DGP Ajai Kumar Singh said.

It focused on issues like "how the quality of investigation could be scaled up", he told reporters after the meet, which was also attended by top police officials of Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.

The focus was in ensuring that the coordination was not restricted to personal or individual contacts but that there was a mechanism in place to ensure smooth coordination.

"Right now there is no country or state that can take it for granted that the level of terrorist activities had come down and relax. In Karnataka though things have been rather more quiet for the last three months, this was no indication that the situation is at ease. The level of alertness has to be very high, more so in a period of lull," Singh said.

According to the DGP, police personnel in Karnataka were being subjected to regular training to ensure a constant state of preparedness. There was proposal to have specially 100 trained constables for the internal security division and another trained batch for Bangalore Police Commissionerate.

Out of the 45 young constables and head constables in each KSRP battalion, 15 were being trained as a quick response team. Each district would have a quick response team.
There was also a proposal to set up a NIA court in the state. The NIA had initiated the proposal and the state police had been supporting the efforts.

Talking about inter-state coordination in the wake of reports alleging differences between police of Kerala and Karnataka over the arrest of PDP leader Abdul Madani, he refuted such allegations.

"There was no communication problem". The arrest was carried out with full cooperation of Kerala Police who ensured tight security on the day of the arrest (in August in connection with the Bangalore serial blasts). The fact that arrest was carried out with no law and order problem was a good example of how such inter-state coordination should work and how law and order problems could be avoided.

"Karnataka Police always received good cooperation from other states," he said, citing various examples of where the state police sought the cooperation of the local police to effect an arrest or bring the accused here.

He said though sometime there had been some issues, they were mainly due to procedural challenges.