The National Investigation Agency (NIA), in collaboration with the police forces of Haryana, Punjab and Union Territory (UT) of Chandigarh on Friday announced the establishment of a collective institutionalised mechanism against organised crimes and criminals in the northern region.
After a high-level inter-state coordination meeting held in Panchkula, Haryana under the chairmanship of NIA Director General, Dinkar Gupta, a decision was also take to set up a ‘Joint Listing Committee’, with representative officers from the NIA and the three police forces, to list out and map the entire network of the various criminal syndicates active in the northern states and UT.
The meeting discussed the activities of leaders and members of organised criminal syndicates operating in the northern states, and also the ongoing investigations in the various criminal cases connected with them. This was the second such meeting steered by the NIA DG for tackling the menace of the organised criminal terror syndicates. The DG had initiated these meetings to collectively deal with such syndicates through sharing of findings and inputs among the various police agencies and forces.
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Underscoring the need for collaborative action in combating organised crime, Gupta called for enhanced cooperation and information sharing among the NIA, Punjab Police, Chandigarh Police, and Haryana Police to effectively address the growing threat posed by these criminal syndicates, particularly in the northern region. NIA, which is investigating three such cases against criminal terror syndicates, shared its findings and observations on the methodology adopted by the syndicates operating from jails.
It emphasised the need for fast tracking of trials against these gangsters as an effective tool to tackle the problem, along with the need for a witness protection plan. Interventions required at both the structural level, as well as the operational level to dismantle the terror-syndicate’s ecosystem, were discussed in the meeting. It was decided to formulate an institutionalised mechanism for timely sharing of actionable inputs with all the stakeholders.
An officer said the growing nexus between criminals and gangsters, with their inter-state linkages and conflicts, has become a cause for concern for the northern states.
The foot soldiers, recruits, harbourers etc of these criminal gangster-syndicates are spread across the states of north India, requiring a coordinated and synergised effort by the police of different states to deal with them effectively, he added.
