Jharkhand governor favours anti-terror centre

Jharkhand Governor Syed Ahmed Wednesday favoured a mechanism like the proposed National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) for a coordinated centre-state approach towards tackling terror.

In his address to the chief minister's meet on internal security here, Ahmed said: "In the context of terrorism and internal security, it would be our considered view that some mechanism like the NCTC is urgently required...."

"On our part, we have already established the Subsidiary Multi Agency Centre as part of the intelligence coordination infrastructure," he said.

"Similarly, the Cyber Defence Research Centre has been set up under the special branch to give teeth to cyber surveillance and analysis apart from protecting our cyber infrastructure from external threats," he said.

"We propose to set up the ATS (Anti-terrorist squad) within the purview of the CID (criminal investigation department) which already handles organised crime and terrorism," he said.

"Although Jharkhand has not had any non-naxal (anti-Maoist) terrorist incidents, it has nevertheless had incidents of harbouring of certain terrorist elements by relatives and acquaintances of terrorist elements who were active in other parts of the country."

Talking about policing, he said a clear thrust had been given for women's safety and security and innovations like anti-eve teasing (anti-molestation) cells had been started.