Police organisations around the country needed to become knowledge bodies like modern corporate firms as part of the strategy to tackle terrorism, said Delhi Joint Commissioner of Police (JCP) Karnal Singh at a national seminar on terrorism disasters, organised by the Karnataka Home Guards here today.

A centralised database of information on terrorists that could be accessed by police anywhere in the country and transcended the terms of police officers needed to be created to enable police in any state to verify the links and cross links of people, modus operandi, techniques and instruments used in terrorism, he added.

He cited the common purchaser of the mobile phones used in the Mecca Masjid blast in Hyderabad and the Ajmer blasts as an example of the level of information on the interconnectivity between terrorists in different parts of the country.

Singh referred to a terror operative, Samiullah, who travelled between Chennai and New Delhi, ahead of a plot to carry out attacks in Delhi, as another instance of the need for knowledge databases on terrorism. Investigations in the Samiullah case have shown the possibility of ISI-trained modules in Sri Lanka trying to cross over to India.

“Often when a police officer with information about terrorism retires or moves on, crucial information they may be carrying in their mind is not available to their successors. This is where the police have to adopt knowledge organisation strategies seen in the corporate world,” he said.

The JCP said cops needed to take care while providing details of investigations in terrorism cases since terrorists were changing their tactics on the basis of information put in the public domain by investigators. “They don’t carry mobile phones anymore to the scene of crime — they use it only for bombs,” he said, adding police should also develop technologies to be in a position to intercept conversations using the Voice Over Internet Protocol.

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