SECURITY

Uttar Pradesh: Four held for ‘links’ with terror funding racket

Uttar Pradesh’s Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS), in a joint operation with LakhimpurKheri police, arrested four people for their alleged involvement in a terror funding network across India.

Terror funding :

The financing of terrorism involves providing finance or financial support to individual terrorists or non-state actors.

Methodologies of terror funding :

-       Terrorists often use people who have no criminal backgrounds to complete financial transactions as they would not to be tracked as easily. These transactions are often disguised as donations to charitiesand gifts from family, these are legal transactions but their intended purpose is illegal because it is for the benefit of terrorist organizations.

-       Organised crime has a strong linkage with terror financing. In the Northeast, extortion is the fundamental basis for funding all forms of terrorism.

-       Kidnapping has been used extensively for spreading terror and raising funds.

-       Human trafficking, drug trafficking and gun running are some of the other criminal activities used for terror financing.

-       In J&K, counterfeit currency has been a major source of funding terrorism.

-       Indian Mujahuddin funds its operations through bank robberies, kidnappings.

-       Controlling of Narcotics in the Afpak region and channelling it into India provide money to terrorist.

-       Some charity organization like Jud provides their charities for terror funding.

-       Donations from West Asia and Pakistan also form a significant chunk for terror funding.

Challenges in dealing with terror funding :

-       Money employed for the purpose, unlike money laundering (ML), can come from legal sources. It remains a contradiction, wherein terrorism is inherently illegal while TF, unless proved and linked with terrorism, could continue to remain a completely legal process.

-       TF rides over a financial network that is seamless and transcends geographical boundaries. This implies the application of multiple laws in different countries, which often makes prosecutioncomplicated and creates lacunae in interpretation.

-       Collection of funds for charitable purposes is often a sensitive issue in most countries. This can also have religious overtones, which makes its regulation challenging.

-       TF has evolved faster than most monetary systems and regulatory mechanisms. From the use of age old systems like hawala for transferring value to e-commerce in the cyber world have led, more often than not, to enforcement agencies playing catch-up.

-       Most acts of terrorism require very little funding to execute. Therefore, the pursuit of large and abnormal fund transfers with an aim of stalling such attacks is likely to result in failure.

 

 

Steps taken to curb terror funds :

-       Strengthening the provisions in the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 to combat terror financing by criminalizing the production or smuggling or circulation of high quality counterfeit Indian currency as a terrorist act and enlarge the scope of proceeds of terrorism to include any property intended to be used for terrorism.

-       A Terror Funding and Fake Currency (TFFC) Cell has been constituted in National Investigation Agency (NIA) to conduct focused investigation of terror funding and fake currency cases.

-       Training programmes are regularly conducted for the State Police personnel on issues relating to combating terrorist financing.

-       FICN Coordination Group (FCORD) has been formed by the Ministry of Home Affairs to share intelligence/information among the security agencies of the states/centre to counter the problem of circulation of fake currency notes.

-       Security at the international borders has been strengthened by using new surveillance technology, deploying additional manpower for round the clock surveillance, establishing observation posts along the international border, erection of border fencing and intensive patrolling.

-       A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) has been signed between India and Bangladesh to prevent and counter smuggling and circulation of fake currency notes.

Reference : https://indianexpress.com/article/india/uttar-pradesh-four-held-for-links-with-terror-funding-racket-6065144/

SOCEITY

Fact Check, Ground reality — Killer cyanide in Kerala: How is it monitored?

Police in Kerala have arrested a woman for allegedly killing her husband, parents-in-law and three other members of the extended family over a period of 14 years using cyanide.

The chemical was allegedly supplied to the woman by a jewellery salesman who procured it from a goldsmith.

Usage of Cyanide:

-       It is used in polishing of gold metal to give them yellow colour.

-       It helps in ridding impurities present in gold.

Regulation of Cyanide :

-       The stocking and sale of cyanide is regulated by the Kerala Poisons Rules, 1996, which were notified under the Poisons Act, 1919, which empowers state governments “to regulate possession for sale and sale of any poison”.

-       The Drugs Control Department under the Government of Kerala’s Health Department issues permits for stocking cyanide for professional use, and licences to stock and sell the chemical.

-       Any individual or institution can apply for both under relevant sections of The Kerala Poisons Rules, 1996.

Number of Permits :

-       The drugs control department says only 35 agencies — research institutions, universities, academic bodies, or labs in the government or private sector — have permits to stock cyanide.

-       An agency can at a time stock only 250 grams; the average annual cyanide intake of an institute in Kerala is 250 g to 500 g.

-       The chemical has an expiry date of three years from manufacture.

Illegal smuggling

-       The industrial use of cyanide is allegedly dependent on smuggling or illegal imports.

-       The small quantities involved make it difficult to detect and seize illegal consignments.

-       The last seizure of cyanide that officials could recall took place in 2002, when sales tax officials at an inter-state border check post in Palakkad seized 250 kg of the chemical from a truck.

Way Forward

-       State Drugs Controller Ravi S Menon said it is proposed to amend The Kerala Poisons Rules in the wake of recurring incidents of acid attacks, as the use and stocking of acid also come under the purview of the Rules.

Reference : https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/kerala-cyanide-murders-jolly-joseph-police-6065014/

DISASTER MANAGEMENT

Explained: Delhi diplomacy to fight disaster

At climate summit in New York, PM Modi pushed the global Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure. As world observes International Day for Disaster Reduction, a look at the initiative India has taken.

Role of global Coalition for disaster resilient Infrastructure

-       Envisaged as an international knowledge platform where countries can collaborate to make their existing and new infrastructure strong enough to withstand natural disasters, CDRI is the fruition of at least three years of discussions that India has had with more than 40 countries on this subject.

-       In simple terms, CDRI is an attempt to bring countries together to share and learn from the experiences of one another to protect their key infrastructure — highways, railways, power stations, communication lines, water channels, even housing — against disasters.

Need  of Protecting Infrastructure:

-       Economic costs of a disaster remain huge, mainly due to the damage caused to big infrastructure.

-       According to a recent estimate by the World Bank, Cyclone Fani, which hit Odisha in May this year, caused damage to the tune of $4 billion.

-       The losses in the Kerala floods last year could be in excess of $4.4 billion, according to a post-disaster needs assessment report by the state government.

-       Much of the developing world is still building its basic infrastructure.

-       Future infrastructure needs to take into account the heightened risks arising out of the increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events and other adverse impacts of climate change.

-       Disaster-proofing a project would involve changes in design, and use of newer technologies.

-       These involve additional costs which, however, are only a fraction of the losses that a disaster can bring.

An International Forum

-       Modern infrastructure is also a web of networked systems, not always confined to national boundaries.

-       There are increasing numbers of trans-national and trans-continental highways and railways; transmission lines carry electricity across countries; assets on a river are shared.

-       Damage to any one node can have cascading impacts on the entire network, resulting in loss of livelihoods and disruption in economic activity in places far away from the site of a disaster.

-       To make entire networks resilient is the main thought behind the Indian initiative of CDRI.

-       The platform is not meant to plan or execute infrastructure projects.

-       Nor is it an agency that will finance infrastructure projects in member countries.

-       Instead, CDRI will seek to identify and promote best practices, provide access to capacity building, and work towards standardisation of designs, processes and regulations relating to infrastructure creation and management.

-       It would also attempt to identify and estimate the risks to, and from, large infrastructure in the event of different kinds of disasters in member countries.

-       CDRI hopes to have as its members not just countries, but organisations like UN bodies, financial institutions, and other groups working on disaster management.

-       It seeks to help member countries integrate disaster management policies in all their activities, set up institutions and regulatory provisions to ensure creation of resilient infrastructure, and identify and use affordable finance and technology.

CDRI AND BELT ROAD

-       Unlike BRI, CDRI is not an attempt by India to create or fund infrastructure projects in other countries.

-       International initiatives like these are not without any strategic or diplomatic objective.

-       India and some other nations view this as an attempt by China to use its economic and military heft to usurp strategic assets in other countries.

CDRI and Solar Alliance

-       ISA, which has evolved into a treaty-based organisation with more than 50 countries already signed up, aims at a collective effort to promote the deployment of solar energy across the world.

-       The CDRI secretariat too would be based in New Delhi.

-       While it is not envisioned to take the shape of a treaty-based organisation, CDRI can be seen as complementing ISA’s efforts.

Reference : https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/simply-put-delhi-diplomacy-to-fight-disaster-climate-change-action-pm-modi-6064999/