By IANS,
Panaji : Goa Police Wednesday snubbed the elite National Investigation Agency (NIA) and said the police investigation into the 2009 Diwali-eve blast in the state was qualitatively better than the probe by the federal agency.
Chief police spokesperson Atmaram Deshpande was responding to queries from the media about the quality of investigation by the special investigation team (SIT), which has been recently tasked to investigate the police-politician-drug mafia nexus.
“The SIT had done a commendable job in cracking the (Diwali-eve) Margao bomb blast case. They did a better job than the NIA. The NIA could not correct or change a single thing from the investigation conducted by them,” said Deshpande, an officer of the rank of police superintendent.
Chief Minister Digambar Kamat had appointed the SIT after the improvised explosive device (IED) blast engineered by Hindu right-wing organisation Sanatan Sanstha killed two people in Margao, 35 km from here, Oct 16, 2009.
After an initial probe, the case was handed over to the NIA for investigation following a central government directive. Formed in 2008 on the lines of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the US, the NIA was created to deal with terror related crimes across the country.
Commenting on the SIT’s probe into the police-politician-drug mafia nexus case, Deshpande said: “The SIT is focused and will fill all the gaps which have been left by the Crime Branch (of police in the case).”
The state government has been reluctant to give the high profile police-politician-drug mafia nexus probe to the Central Bureau of Investigation, despite repeated demands from within the party and the opposition.
The opposition has claimed that several top politicians and police officials, including Home Minister Ravi Naik’s son, were linked to the Israeli drug mafia based in Goa.
The Panaji bench of the Bombay High Court observed in September 2010 that the police were not investigating the case seriously, fearing more political skeletons would fall out of the closet.