In its fight against terrorism, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) registered stupendous conviction rate of 94.70 per cent and attached assets worth around Rs 56 crore during 2023.
As compared with 490 accused arrested in 2022, the total number of arrests made by the NIA this year stood at 625 – a nearly 28 per cent increase over the previous year. These include 65 accused arrested in ISIS cases, 114 arrested for jihadi terror cases, 45 accused of human trafficking cases, 28 accused of terrorist and organized criminal activity and 76 accused of Left-Wing Extremism (LWE) cases.
The anti-terror agency registered a total of 68 cases in 2023, covering a wide spectrum of terror related incidents. These encompass 18 Jihadi terror cases in multiple states, three cases from Jammu and Kashmir, 12 cases of LWE, seven cases involving terrorist and organised criminal activity in Punjab, five cases of the Northeast, and two cases related to Fake Indian Currency Notes (FICN).
The number of persons chargesheeted and convicted stood, respectively, at 513 and 74, as against 459 and 79 in 2022. The 74 accused convicted during 2023 were sentenced to various quantums of ‘Rigorous Imprisonment’ and ‘fines’ as punishment.
As far as absconders go, the NIA managed to track down and arrest 47 accused in 2023, which was 14 more than last year. One of the biggest breakthroughs in this regard came with the arrest of a key absconding accused in the Attari border heroin seizure case, involving smuggling of over 102 kgs of the narcotics from Afghanistan via the India-Pak border.
Also, arrests made upon deportation and extradition signify NIA’s commitment to pursuing offenders across its international borders. While Amritpal Singh alias Ammy, Amrik Singh, Manpreet Singh alias Peeta and Mandeep Singh were deported from the Philippines, Vikram Brar was arrested upon deportation from the United Arab Emirates.
The number of searches and raids by the NIA also recorded a significant increase over the previous year, going up from 957 in 2022 to 1,040 in 2023.
In 2022, the agency had attached a total of 37 properties worth Rs 10.53 crore, while in 2023, the figure went up to 240 (including 156 bank accounts) with a total value of Rs 55.90 crore. These properties belonged to the accused and suspects involved in terrorism, LWE, explosives and other prominent cases. The attachments, made under various provisions of UA(P)A, included 12 properties (of which four were bank accounts), worth Rs 1.5 crore, of six listed ‘Individual Terrorists’.
The crackdowns on violent Jihad across India proved to be a huge accomplishment for NIA during 2023, which saw several modules of the banned global ISIS being busted through nationwide raids and searches.
A total of 15 accused were arrested in December, following raids at 44 locations in Maharashtra and Karnataka, which also led to the seizure of huge amounts of incriminating materials. A similar crackdown led to the arrest of eight operatives of the ISIS Ballari module on December 18, thus enabling the NIA to foil the banned global terrorist organisations’s plans to carry out a series of terror acts, especially IED blasts, across the country. Crackdowns were also carried out against such radicalized ISIS and HuT modules in Jabalpur and Bhopal in separate cases in September.