Bu Sumit Kumar Singh
New Delhi, Feb 29 (IANS): The information provided by the Intelligence Bureau (IB) about the prevailing ground situation in northeast Delhi before riots broke out were "unsubstantial in nature", sources in Delhi Police said.
The input generated by the Subsidiary Intelligence Bureau (SIB), Delhi headed by Joint Director Vikram Thakur and shared with Delhi Police had "vague reference" of communal tension and "nothing specific" was mentioned in their series of intel reports, sources said.
They further stated that IB Director Arvind Kumar along with Thakur had visited the riot-affected areas early wee hours on Wednesday. They did after National Security Advisor Ajit Doval took charge of the riot-affected situation on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's direction.
Doval had appointed Special Commissioner of Police S.N. Shrivastava to look after the law and order situation.
After visit, Kumar had submitted a detailed report to the Prime Minster Office which had stated reports of rioters coming from Uttar Pradesh's Moradabad and few other areas. It also stated that how a mobilisation of locals was made on Sunday evening within an hour. It has also a sequence of the events and how violence started.
The SIB, which is responsible for gathering local intelligence, allegedly failed to gauge the situation in the northeast region. This is not the first time it had happened.
The SIB has failed to generate specific reports at many instances. Be it the police and lawyers feud, violence in JNU, or conspiracy to hit Central government on Citizen Amendment Act, the SIB could not gauge the situation.
The unit for the last two years is more engaged into preparing reports on cabinet ministers' performances, marriages of bureaucrats' family members and other issues, but it always had missed larger issues which happened in Delhi, sources police, state government and Ministry of Home Affairs alleged.
The unit earlier was headed by IPS officer Safi Ahsan Rizvi, who had stressed more on generating ground reports rather than copy-cut-paste job.
When Rizvi was promoted as Additional Director in 2019 and sent to head economic intelligence, the SIB came under 1996-batch IPS Vikram Thakur who is from the Uttar Pradesh cadre.
Before this, Thakur was in the operational wing of the Intelligence Bureau and worked in coordination with the Delhi Police Special cell for long. He had worked upon various terror modules.
The Delhi Police has also a unit -- Special Branch -- which also generate local intelligence. The unit is currently headed by 1993-batch IPS officer Praveer Ranjan. Their reports before riots too had no 'specific input'.