Maharashtra ATS, crime branch fight for power, forget about terror

The battle for one-upmanship between the Mumbai crime branch and the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) has reportedly cost the Delhi police dearly in its probe into the firing at Jama Masjid on September 19.

A three-member team of Delhi Police, which came to the city last week for investigations, has complained to the union home ministry that their probe was hampered because of a turf war between the crime branch and ATS.

The team, which had come with some clues given by central security agencies about the email and the technique used by Indian Mujahideen (IM), found that everything had been leaked to the media.

They also found interesting developments that the telecom operator — Tata Docomo — had been approached by the two elite forces of the Mumbai Police separately and details of the phone number were taken and given to the media, sources said.

Blast from the past
Sources in Mumbai Police said that the Delhi Police are the latest victim of the turf war between the two elite police forces. “They have been at loggerheads ever since the ATS was formed in 2005,” a senior officer said, adding that the rift between the two forces had widened immediately after the 26/11 terror attacks.

“The state government made a big mistake by handing over the investigations to the crime branch. It was a terror attack and the ATS was formed precisely for this purpose,” the officer said.

The differences reached their zenith, when the crime branch busted the email module of the IM in 2008. “Both crime branch and ATS were investigating the matter and both identified the prime suspect Afzal Usmani simultaneously, but the crime branch managed to arrest Usmani before the ATS could,” the officer said.

Another instance of differences between the two was visible when the crime branch in 2009 claimed that the July 11, 2006, serial train blasts in Mumbai were done by the IM. “This claim by the crime branch indicated that the module arrested by the ATS in the case could be a wrong group. This sent out wrong signals and raised several questions over the arrests made by the ATS,” the officer said.

Former IPS officer YP Singh said that the basic reason of this tussle is jealousy. “Crime Branch is encroaching upon the jurisdiction of the ATS. Ideally, the 26/11 case should have been with the ATS. This is an infringement of the stipulated work profile of the ATS.

Crime branch is like any other police station and it can give inputs but it should not compete with ATS,” Singh said.

Jama Masjid case
Investigations so far into the Jama Masjid firing case have revealed that a youth identifying himself as Purva Shinde procured an activated SIM card on fake documents and got the GPRS activated. The Mumbai crime branch has detained one person for allegedly issuing a SIM card without verifying the documents provided for registration of the card.

Using GPRS, the accused IM cadre surfed into a server based in Norway. The email was already saved in draft folder of al.arbi999123@gmail.com and was accessed using the GPRS phone at 13:37 hours on September 19 and sent to various media houses. Meanwhile, the police have detained two shop owners from Manish Market because the email sent to various media houses after the firing in Delhi was sent from a second hand mobile phone which was bought from their shop.