Close on the heels of the Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s first visit to Jammu and Kashmir after it became a Union Territory in August 2019, Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha’s government has created an elite terror investigation agency on the pattern of the National Investigation Agency (NIA).

Shah’s visit happened in the backdrop of the killing of 11 civilians and equal number of soldiers, including three officers, in October. He was in Srinagar on the night of 24 October when MBBS students of the Government Medical College Srinagar and the tertiary care hospital, Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS), celebrated the Indian cricket team’s defeat and the Pakistani team’s victory in Dubai with singing of the Pakistani national anthem and pro-Pakistan slogans.

The J&K Home Department’s Order No: 286 dated 1 November 2021 accorded sanction to the constitution of a specialised agency, titled State Investigation Agency (SIA), for investigation and prosecution of terrorism-related offences. The SIA will be the nodal agency for coordinating with the NIA and other Central agencies. It shall take “such other measures as may be necessary for speedy and effective investigation and prosecution of terrorism related cases”, said the government order.

The Criminal Investigation Department’s wings, Counter-intelligence Kashmir (CIK) and Counter-intelligence Jammu (CIJ), which stand already notified as Police Stations since 1977, shall also be the Police Stations for the cases to be registered and processed by the SIA. The Special Director of CID has been designated as the SIA’s Ex-officio Director who will have powers to suo motu registration of FIRs. He will also preside over the investigation and prosecution of all the cases filed by the SIA.

The Station House Officers will be responsible for reporting all terrorism related cases, immediately after registration or as soon as a terror linkage surfaces, to the SIA. The Director General of Police has been empowered to transfer certain cases from the SIA to the NIA and vice versa in coordination with Director SIA.

The agency would file FIRs and conduct investigation in the matters related to terrorism (unlawful activities, conspiracy, murder, kidnapping, attack on security forces, Police or civilians, narcotics, snatching of arms, extortion, thefts, ATM/bank robbery, IT and cybercrime, counterfeit currency etc.).

The SIA will also investigate “cases relating to terrorism-linked propaganda, false narrative, large scale incitement, spreading of disaffection, enmity against the Indian Union”.

For many years, CIK and CIJ operated only as intelligence agencies keeping an eye on trans-border activity. However, in the recent past they were assigned different terrorism-related cases including the alleged terror funding of the PDP Youth Wing president Waheed-ur-Rehman Parra. The CIJ also conducted a raid on Jammu’s Kote Bhalwal jail after it received reports of nexus between some prisoners and the prison officials. Officials said that 5 to 6 cases were currently under investigation with CIK and CIJ.

The constitution of the SIA combines the two intelligence and investigation wings under CID which will get more staff including Deputy SPs, Inspectors and Sub Inspectors. A special incentive of 25 percent of the basic pay has been announced for the SIA staff. The SIA can co-opt with its investigations any Police, security or intelligence agency including the one currently looking after the cybercrime.

According to highly placed authoritative sources, the NIA was currently handling as many as 40 cases of terror-related crimes of Jammu and Kashmir. While charge-sheet has been filed in around 30 cases, the agency is still investigating 10 FIRs including the infamous terror-funding case registered in New Delhi in 2017. While the NIA has investigated the case of the killing of 40 CRPF men in a suicide attack at Lethapora Pulwama in February 2019, it is still probing a drone attack on an airport in Jammu.

Official sources said that the SIA’s key responsibility would be to check and counter a “world-wide propaganda and narrative campaign against India” in the social media as well as international media and academia. The Centre and the UT government are said to be under pressure over the reports of several Indian intellectuals and mediapersons, including many from Kashmir, operating a concerted narrative warfare against India.

Union Ministry of Home Affairs and the Union Ministry of External Affairs have been facing questions as to why the Government of India had failed in extradition of the main anti-India campaigners and cancellation of their passports. It has been pointed out that many of them have been left free to shuttle between their homes across India and their work places abroad.

The Central government had created the NIA after the Mumbai terror attacks of November 2008 for specialised investigation of terror-linked cases transcending the State and the country borders. In a competition, J&K’s separatist and mainstream politicians had strongly objected to the NIA’s jurisdiction over the State of the then special status.

In a statement on Tuesday, Peoples Alliance for Gupkar Declaration (PAGD), which has Farooq Abdullah’s National Conference (NC) and Mehbooba Mufti’s Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as its key constituents, said that the SIA’s formation was “one more assault on democratic rights and civil liberties of citizens”.

“In the name of fighting terrorism these agencies and laws are being weaponised against the citizens who hold a different viewpoint from the government,” the PAGD spokesman and CPIM) leader, Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami said.

“What was the need to add one more such agency? When already NIA and UAPA have created havoc among the people by gross misuse of these draconian measures. J&K is a political issue and needs a political outreach. What was required to be done was to provide relief and not any addition to such harsh measures which are bound to deepen their alienation,” Tarigami added.

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