PILs in SC seek federal probe agency

New Delhi: Two PILs have been filed in the Supreme Court for setting up of a federal investigating agency (FIA) notwithstanding the Centre’s post-Mumbai terror attack promise to examine the feasibility of such a force. The UPA government’s public statement on the federal agency could be a knee-jerk reaction to the massive outburst against politicians at the helm of affairs and the resolve may get lost in political dithering once things normalise, feel petitioners Abani Kumar Sahu and Joydeep Mukherjee. Though both PILs want an FIA to be in place with state-ofthe-art equipment and infrastructure support, with its personnel trained to meet the challenges of the day, they cited different reasons for their plea before the apex court. Sahu, who was earlier complimented by the Supreme Court for a well-researched PIL seeking a guarantee from the government to safeguard the citizen’s right to live in a secure atmosphere in the aftermath of the Delhi blasts, said the present federal agency CBI had lost its credibility by acting in a partisan manner in many important cases like Bofors, Taj Heritage Corridor scam and the fodder scam. He said the government had consistently side-stepped the SC’s 1998 directions in the Jain-Hawala case to make CBI a professional investigating agency that could be used for counterterrorism operations. “While terrorism has aggressively progressed, the CBI has progressively regressed from professionalism,” Sahu said, seeking immediate steps, in the wake of the Mumbai attacks, for setting up of a federal agency that could be effective against terrorism. On the other hand, Mukherjee felt a federal agency could only probe the continuous illegal infiltration from Bangladeshis into India, which he suspected was a major contributory factor for the increasing terrorist activities in the country. “With the help of Pakistan’s ISI and Bangladesh’s Director General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI), many terrorist groups are getting militant training in Bangladesh and after being trained, they are infiltrating West Bengal for controlling and conducting terrorist activities in India,” Mukherjee said. He said thousands of Bangladeshis had settled down in many districts of West Bengal and changed the demographic pattern. Though it was common knowledge, “the government and political parties remain silent because of their vote bank”. BJP backs FIA proposal New Delhi: The Federal Investigating Agency (FIA), conceived to probe all terror related and other cases of organised crime having inter-state ramifications, could soon become a reality with the BJP on Thursday indicating that it could support the move.. The BJP, however, also called for a federal security law which could give the FIA a “tough” legal framework while also calling on the government for a “full and comprehensive sharing of facts”. BJP’s green signal came when home minister P Chidambaram met Leader of Opposition L K Advani to seek consensus on FIA.

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