By IANS,
New Delhi : As the first head of the National Investigation Agency (NIA), formed after the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, Radha Vinod Raju says his first priority is to build up his team.
“At present I am setting up the team and am focusing on that,” Raju told IANS. He said that no case had so far been earmarked for investigation by the NIA.
Home Minister P. Chidambaram Tuesday told the Lok Sabha that orders were being issued to recruit officers for NIA and that Raju had been tasked to handpick the best investigators to staff the new agency.
As a first step in that direction, orders were issued to recruit one deputy inspector general, two superintendents of police, two deputy superintendents of police and two inspectors, said Chidambaram.
According to home ministry sources, the NIA will, as it evolves, also have a crime intelligence unit like the CBI’s special unit that will be responsible for all kinds of terror-related intelligence.
This unit will be linked to the Multi Agency Centre (MAC) for information sharing among different intelligence agencies.
Among those recruited are officers with a track record of doing good investigation work.
Responding to a question, Chidambaram reiterated that the Mumbai attacks would not be probed by the NIA as investigations were already on.
“The Mumbai investigation is well on track. It has made considerable progress. There is no need for transferring it to NIA,” he said.
He also added that the Mumbai probe was almost complete and the police were poised to file a comprehensive chargesheet.
Raju, a 1975 Indian Police Service officer, is a seasoned investigator, who has been entrusted over the years to probe a number of high-profile cases.
He led a team in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case and was also involved in the investigation of the hijacking of the Indian Airlines plane from Kathmandu to Kandahar in Afghanistan.