Raju of SIT fame to head NIA

Radha Vinod Raju, a senior Indian Police Service (IPS) officer who was in the team that successfully investigated the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, was today appointed as the first Director General of the National Investigation Agency (NIA).

Raju’s appointment, which was announced by the government today, has ended Union Home Minister P Chidambaram’s search for an officer who would also be responsible for building this new organisation, which will probe cases with national and international ramifications.

Raju, a Jammu and Kashmir cadre officer of the 1975 batch, was the Vigilance Commissioner in the border state with the rank of Additional Director General, before the current appointment.

According to home ministry sources, Raju was personally selected by Chidambaram over two other candidates for the coveted job — Jharkhand cadre IPS officer A P Singh and Haryana cadre officer S C Sinha. Chidambaram had personally interviewed all the three officers.

Raju was noticed for his investigating skills during his work in the Special Investigation Team (SIT) set up under the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to investigate the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi at Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu in 1991. The SIT had cracked the assassination plot which was hatched and executed by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE) of Sri Lanka.

Raju, who was a young officer at that time, was hailed for having led the initial hunt for the five-member LTTE terrorist cell led by Sivarajan soon after Gandhi’s assassination. Along with team head D R Karthikeyan, Raju was rated as a key member of the SIT. Both of them have jointly authored a book on the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case.

Meanwhile, Chidambaram today said the NIA would not take up the Mumbai terrorist strike case as the “investigations were on the right track”.

Speaking to the media, Chidambaram said since cobbling a team at the NIA was likely to take some time, the agency would start functioning with a core group at the earliest. Raju will have a two-year tenure ending December 31, 2010.

Chidambaram also said that the NIA would pick officers from the Army and the police.