State police becoming proactive in catching ISI agents!

The rise in arrests of ISI terrorists by police of various states has shown a trend of how they have become more vigilant in combating terrorism as compared to special investigative agencies like CBI and NIA. The recent arrest of a top Lashkar-e-Taiba commander and ideologue, Abdul Subhan Qureshi by special cell of Delhi Police, who was planning to kidnap a city industrialist, is one such example of it.

A cursory view of a sample of Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) terrorists arrested in last five years reveals interesting results. Out of 43 ISI-linked terrorists arrested during the past five years, 41 have been arrested by police of various states. It includes special cell of police and Anti Terrorist Squads (ATS). While Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is country premium investigative agency, National Investigation Agency (NIA) is federal agency established by the government to combat terrorism. Data suggests that the maximum number of ISIS agents have been arrested in the national capital. As per the study, in last five years, seven incidents of arrest of ISI terrorists have come to the fore from Delhi. Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal follow Delhi with five cases each. While Rajasthan reported four cases, three cases each have been registered from Bihar and Tamil Nadu. Two ISI terrorist have also been arrested from Gujarat. One ISI terrorist was also arrested from Haryana in the year 2010. The study has also picked up another trend of Fake Indian Currency Notes (FICN) seized by such terrorists. For instance, in March 2009, Punjab Police arrested four people having fake currency of the face value of Rs 20,000. In August 2009, Amritsar Police arrested a woman agent Savinder Kaur having fake currency of Rs 4.8 lakh. There were many other cases in which high amount of fake currency notes were recovered. Other than FICN, maps and photographs of Indian Army have also been seized by ISI terrorist recently. For instance, Amir Ahmed alias Bhura of Nukkud in the Saharanpur District who was arrested in 2009 had hand-drawn maps of Army units in Dehradun and Meerut. Sensitive documents relating to important military installations, photographs, charts, movements of military units were also recovered from a terrorist caught by Punjab Police in March 2009. Similarly, an ISI agent, identified as Irfan Ulla was arrested, with maps of vital defence installations, near the Indian Air Force (IAF) station at Mullanpur in Mohali District in 2009.