New Delhi: Union Home Minister and Minister of Cooperation Amit Shah Thursday said that the incidents of violence in Jammu and Kashmir had reduced by 70 percent and the civilian deaths by 81 percent during the last nine years of the government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi compared to the 10-years rule of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government.
An official spokesman in a statement issued to the Press Information Bureau (PIB) quoted the Union Home Minister while inaugurating a two-day anti-terror conference organised by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in New Delhi as saying that from June 2004 to May 2014 when the UPA-I and UPA-II held the reins of power at New Delhi, the number of incidents of violence reported in J&K was 7217, which were down to 2197 from June 2014 to August 2023 during the nine years PM Modi has been at the helm of affairs, a decline of 70 percent.
He said that the number of civilian deaths from June 2004 to May 2014 was 1769, which had come down to 336 from June 2014 to August 2023, a decline of 81 percent.
Shah said that the total number of deaths of civilians and security forces from June 2004 to May 2014 was 2829, which had fallen to 891 from June 2014 to August 2023, witnessing a decline of 69 percent.
He said that the security forces killed from June 2004 to May 2014 were 1060, which had come down to 555 from June 2014 to August 2023, witnessing a decline of 48 percent.
In his inaugural address, the Union Home Minister said that under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the central and state agencies have succeeded in firmly curbing all forms of terrorism in the country in the last 9 years.
“We need to not only combat terrorism but also dismantle its entire ecosystem,” he said.
Shah said that the Model Anti-terrorism Structure should be established under the purview of the NIA and the hierarchy, structure, and SoPs of Investigation of all anti-terrorism agencies in all states should be made uniform for better coordination between central and state agencies.
“All anti-terrorism agencies must adopt such a ruthless approach so that a new terrorist organisation cannot be formed,” he said.
The Union Home Minister said that the task of NIA, ATS, and STF should not be limited to investigation but they should also think out of the box and take innovative measures to counter terrorism.
He said that the fight against terrorism requires collaboration from the global level to the grassroots, involving various states within the country, as well as international cooperation.
Shah said that the task of NIA, ATS, and STF should not be limited to investigation but they should also think out of the box and take innovative measures to counter terrorism.
He said that the fight against terrorism requires collaboration from the global level to the grassroots, involving various states within the country, as well as international cooperation.
The Union Home Minister said that the government led by PM Modi had taken a tough stand on all the challenges like cryptocurrency, hawala, terror-funding, organised crime syndicates, and narco-terror links, which had yielded very good results, but still a lot more was to be done.
He said that to deal with terrorism, the Centre and the states, their agencies, and inter-agency cooperation would have to think in vertical and horizontal ways.
Shah said that the government led by PM Modi had prepared many database verticals in the last 5 years.
He stressed that all the agencies of the Centre and the state should make multidimensional and Artificial Intelligence-based use of the database, only then would the fight against terrorism be successful.
The Union Home Minister said that the database should be used for investigation, prosecution, prevention, and action.
He stressed upon every police station as well as young Police officers to make maximum use of the database.
Shah said that the Inter-Operable Criminal Justice System (ICJS) – CCTNS was implemented in 99.93 percent (16,733) police stations, 22,000 courts had been connected to e-Court, and about 2 crore prisoner data had been made available through e-Prison and 1 crore through e-Prosecution.
He said that more than 17 lakh prosecution data was available and more than 17 lakh forensic data was from e-forensics.
“Similarly, the National Automated Fingerprint Identification System (NAFIS) has more than 90 lakh fingerprint records. Under Integrated Monitoring of Terrorism (i-MoT), data on 22,000 terrorist cases is available for monitoring UAPA-registered cases. Data on more than 5 lakh narco-offenders is available under the National Integrated Database on Arrested Narco-Offenders (NIDAN). Data of about 1 lakh human traffickers is available under the National Database of Human Trafficking Offenders (NDHTO). Data of more than 14 lakh alerts is available under the Crime Multi Agency Center (Cri-MAC). Data from more than 28 lakh complaints is available on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal (NCRP). A biometric database of prisoners and information about their visitors is available in the Prison Database. Apart from this, the national level terrorism database of the NIA is also available,” the Union Home Minister said.
He said that there should be a common training module for all central and state-level counter-terrorism agencies so that uniformity could be brought in the methodology of fighting against terrorism.
Shah asked the NIA and the IB to take the initiative in this direction.
He said that now the time had come to work from the need to know to need to share and duty to share approach.
The Union Home Minister said that the number of terrorist incidents in the year 2001 was 6000, which the government at the Centre led by PM Modi had reduced to 900 in the year 2022.
He praised the NIA for achieving a more than 94 percent conviction rate and said more work was needed in this direction.
Shah also asked all the states to take steps to increase the conviction rate.
He said that under the leadership of PM Modi, with the cooperation of the central and state governments, major successes had been achieved in the fight against drugs.
“These achievements include Operation Samudragupta, conducted this year under the leadership of NCB, during which narcotics worth more than Rs 12,000 crore were seized simultaneously. Apart from this, 10 lakh kg of drugs have also been disposed of,” the Union Home Minister said.
He said that terrorism had no boundaries and no state could face terrorism alone.
“We all have to come together to root out this evil,” Shah said and suggested making five actionable points in every session of the two-day conference and sending them to the Union Home Ministry.
Minister of State for Home Affairs, Nishith Pramanik, Home Secretary, Director Intelligence Bureau, Director General NIA, as well as Director Generals of Central Armed Police Forces, State Police Chiefs, and senior officials from the Centre and State governments were also present.
The Union Home Minister awarded medals to the NIA officials for service excellence.
J&K SSP gets ‘excellence in investigation’
award in Delhi
Shah honoured Rakesh Balwal, the Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP), Srinagar, with the prestigious ‘Excellence in Investigation’ award.
Balwal is a 2012 batch IPS officer of the Manipur cadre, and he has been recently repatriated to his parent cadre.
He has served in different capacities during his tenure in J&K and the NIA.
Balwal was responsible for cracking some high-profile cases, including the Pulwama terror attack in which 40 CRPF personnel were killed by a car-borne suicide bomber on February 14, 2019.