State intelligence on high alert

The State intelligence agency acting on a tip off from the Central Intelligence Bureau has stepped up its activity, and is monitoring closely several suspected organisations and individuals in the State. Several fundamentalist outfits and even Tamil groups, which are active in the State, are under the agency’s scanner.

According to a senior police officer, the highly specialised “Q Branch” of the Tamil Nadu police has given tips to the State and central intelligence agencies of the links certain Maoist organisations in the State have with the Tamil militant outfits and Islamic groups operating abroad.

The Tamil Nadu intelligence wing had recently apprehended three Tamil operatives and recovered from them documents regarding the training programmes they had conducted in the forest tracts adjoining the Kerala border. The three when interrogated had confessed to the Tamil Nadu sleuths that they had trained several college and university students of Kerala.

It may be recalled that there were news reports of the presence of the dreaded Maoist leader Rajamouli in Kollam. He was reportedly apprehended at Kollam before he was killed in Andhra Pradesh. The Kerala police and the Andhra Police had denied the incident, but certain police officers have told mediapersons that the incident had indeed occurred.

The central intelligence agencies have warned the State police to verify the antecedents of certain students who are getting admitted to the self-financing institutions, which are mushrooming in the State. The agencies have also asked to keep a close watch in the wake of proliferation of incriminating documents and literature in the hostels of certain colleges in Central Travancore and Kozhikode, where a radical outfit is very active.

The presence of large number of Tamil speaking population in the border areas of Kerala and the recent kidnapping of fishermen from Kerala and Tamil Nadu by the LTTE are also causes for worry for the State and central agencies which are probing into the antecedents of certain organisations and groups.

The central intelligence agencies have already checked the antecedents of certain institutions and colleges, which are being considered as a potential breeding centre for some highly fundamentalist religious groups. The intelligence agencies have also come to the conclusion that in modern day anti-terror operations the identity and the upbringing of the students need not only be the criteria for being watched as in the case of the brothers Kafeel and Sabeel who were brought up in good middle class families.

The intelligence agencies have also screening educational agencies and organisations which are sending students to countries especially UK and Australia. The agencies have information that certain overseas educational consultants are using education as a cover to transport terror.

The major area where the agencies are concentrating is the money being pumped into for costly overseas education and the antecedents of persons who are standing as guarantors to huge sums of money to the tune of Rs 20-25 lakh.