The Ministry of Home Affairs on Monday unveiled India's first counter-terrorism policy, 'Prahaar', that sets out a multi-layered strategy based on "zero tolerance", intelligence-led prevention as well as disruption of extremist violence. It is aimed at denying terrorists, their financiers, along with supporters, access to funds, weapons and safe havens.
The National Counter-Terrorism Policy and Strategy outlines how India plans to confront all the evolving terror threats. Among these are cross-border jihadist networks and smuggling via drones, to cyber radicalisation and funding through cryptocurrency.
In order to counter the terror threats emanating from India or abroad, the policy is based on seven key pillars:
- Prevention of terror attacks.
- Responses.
- Aggregating internal capacities.
- Human rights and 'Rule of Law'-based processes.
- Attenuating the conditions conducive to terrorism.
- Aligning and shaping the international efforts to counter terrorism.
- Recovery and resilience via a whole-of-society approach.
- Identification of threats
Highlighting how India has been at the forefront of the ongoing fight against terrorism for decades now, the policy bluntly identifies state-sponsored terrorism from across India's borders, along with global terrorist organisations like Al-Qaeda and ISIS that are attempting to incite violence in the country through sleeper cells.
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"There has been a history of sporadic instability in the immediate neighbourhood of India, which has often given rise to ungoverned spaces," the document mentions, without naming Pakistan.
"Besides, a few countries in the region have sometimes used terrorism as an instrument of State Policy. Notwithstanding this, India does not link terrorism to any specific religion, ethnicity, nationality or civilisation. India has always denounced terrorism and its use by any actor for achieving any stated or unstated ends, unambiguously and unequivocally," it added.
The central government, for the first time in a consolidated policy document, has highlighted the risks from CBRNED material - chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, explosive and digital. It has warned about the dual threat from both state and non-state actors that misuse emerging technologies and cyber tools for mass-casualty attacks.
'Prahaar' has an intelligence-guided prevention model at its core. It placesthe Multi-Agency Centre (MAC) and the Joint Task Force on Intelligence (JTFI) within the Intelligence Bureau as the nodal platform for real-time sharing of counter-terror inputs.
Centralised Coordination And Human Rights
It reaffirms local police as the first responders to any terror incident and mentions a tiered response architecture that involves state special forces and central units. Notably, the National Security Guard (NSG) has been designated as the nodal national counter-terror force and the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and state police have been entrusted with investigations and prosecution.
Moreover, the document states that Indian laws, including anti-terrorism laws, give "due importance to human rights".
The Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) is the principal anti-terror law and operates along with the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita and Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam.
"Multiple levels of legal redressal are available to any accused through an elaborate infrastructure of the justice system, from the Districts, through States, right up to the higher judiciary at the Central level. The due process of law gives wide scope to the Supreme Court of India for the protection of the rights of citizens," it added.
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