Govt allots industrial land to NIA

Thiruvananthapuram: Taking into consideration national security, the government has made an exemption to the rules and allotted industrial land for constructing an office complex National Investigation Agency (NIA) in the state. As per existing rules, industrial land cannot be used for any other purpose.
The state cabinet has cleared the proposal for handing over three acres of land from the 100 acres allotted for Hindustan Machine Tools (HMT) in Kalamassery in Kochi, to the NIA. At present, the agency is operating on temporary premises.

NIA’S Kochi branch is considered as one of the most crucial and strategically important branches of the agency, which was formed immediately after the Mumbai terror attacks of 2008, to probe terrorism-related and national security-related cases. The Kochi branch was opened in 2011, after the ones in New Delhi and Hyderabad. Even the Mumbai office of the agency was opened later. Now there are six fully functional offices for NIA in the country,

The Kochi office also caters to Tamil Nadu in addition to the cases in the state and is considered one of the best performing and top-rated branch offices of the organization. Interestingly, even the first conviction in a case that was probed by the NIA came from Kochi office.

The Kozhikode twin blasts case that occurred on March 3, 2006, were the fifth and sixth cases probed by the NIA, immediately after its formation. The agency also had taken up four more cases in the state in 2010 that includes the Kalamassery bus burning case, Binanipuram SIMI camp case, Wagamon SIMI camp case and LeT terror recruitment case at Edakkad in Kannur. Also, in 2011, the agency took up the probe of hand chopping of T J Joseph in Muvattupuzha, that justified the agency’s strong presence in the state.

“The agency’s presence in the state is very crucial for multiple reasons. In addition to several cases related to fake Indian currency notes, the increased Jihadi activities and most recently, the ISIS links that are being traced to the state warrant the constant attention and presence of an agency like the NIA in the state,” a top police official said.

The Union cabinet on October 27, 2016, had given clearance for handing over the land from the HMT to NIA for building its own facility in Kochi, that is at present functioning at a rented facility near Kadavanthra. The state government, while deciding to hand over the land to NIA, has also made it clear that this would be a special case, and would not be considered as a precedent in future.