Hyderabad: NATGRID out to get cracking on counter-terror ops by year-end

Hyderabad: Law enforcement and security agencies will have National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID) coming to their aid in the counter-terror operations to nab fugitives trying to flee the country from December 31, this year.

It may be mentioned here that until now the law enforcement agencies have been engaged in intelligence sharing between the central and State police, besides other specialist agencies raised to counter the terrorist activities.

However, the NATGRID is going to help them with seamless connectivity with various databases to monitor and identify the suspicious persons and their activities and to take preventive measures.

According to Union Minister of State for Home Affairs, G Kishan Reddy, the NATGRID will link to several databases, held by both the government agencies and private players. They include, railways, police, immigration, airline, passports, vehicle ownership, driving licences, PAN data, stolen vehicles and the like.

In turn, this would help the enforcement agencies to track the suspicious persons and their activities based on the intelligence shared from both the central and the State intelligence agencies to swing into action.

The uniqueness of the NATGRID is that it will have access to the databases even to the databases from online aggregators providing various services like airline ticketing and other services.

Kishan Reddy said that the NATGRID has been created as an IT platform to assist the security and law enforcement agencies to counter-terror for national security.

"The physical infrastructure for NATGRID will be completed by the end of March this year. Further, the IT solution will go live from December 31, this year, giving the enforcement agencies across the country an effective tool to run the counter-terror operations," he said.

In addition to this, he said there is a close and effective mechanism developed between intelligence and security agencies at the Centre and the State level.

The Multi-Agency Centre (MAC) has been strengthened and re-organised to enable it to function round the clock for real-time collation and sharing of intelligence between the Centre and States. The States also raised special forces to deal with terror incidents.

Besides, the Central Armed Police Forces and National Security Guards have also been stationed at different locations in the country to assist the States in dealing with such counter-terror operations.

As part of these efforts, the Central agencies have been organising capacity-building programmes for the State forces regarding intelligence sharing and investigation of terror cases, he added.