New Delhi, Sept. 28 -- Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Monday called for strengthening India's counter-terrorism mechanisms over the next decade, stressing the need to adopt a proactive, coordinated and result-oriented approach, extending from the national level to individual police stations.
Addressing a conference on 'PRAHAAR - CT Policy and Strategy' in New Delhi, Shah said the country's zero-tolerance policy towards terrorism needed to be backed by continuous analysis of terror incidents and stronger institutional mechanisms for an automated counter-terrorism response network.
The PRAHAAR framework is based on seven pillars -- Prevention, Response, Aggregating Internal Capacities, Human Rights, Attenuating Conditions for Terrorism, Aligning International Efforts, and Recovery and Resilience.
"We have adopted a policy of zero tolerance towards terrorism and it is critical to conduct a continuous analysis of terror incidents to take the PRAHAAR strategy forward," Shah said, stressing that its guiding principles should reach the police-station level.
He also called for closer coordination among security and investigative agencies to ensure there was no delay in responding to terrorism-related threats.
The conference was attended by the Union Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary, chiefs of Central Armed Police Forces and Central Police Organisations, DGPs of 15 states and heads of Anti-Terrorism Squads of all states and Union Territories. Senior police officers participated virtually.
Shah said enhanced inter-agency coordination had helped dismantle more than 40 modules linked to the Shahzad Bhatti network, which authorities allege was involved in cross-border smuggling of weapons, explosives and narcotics. More than 100 FIRs were registered and 350 people arrested across 15 states, he said.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.