Amit Shah to chair high-level meet on NATGRID tomorrow

New Delhi: Union Home Minister Amit Shah will chair a high-level meeting on Friday to review the progress of the National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID), a robust intelligence gathering mechanism being set up to track terror suspects and incidents.

Before this, top officials in the home ministry today suggested ways for the NATGRID revival, through a presentation to Home Minister Amit Shah, said home ministry sources. NATGRID was first proposed in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on Mumbai in 2008 and was unveiled by then home minister P. Chidambaram in December 2009.

Before the attacks, the American Lashkar operative David Coleman Headley had visited India several times and it is argued that if India had a system like NATGRID been in place, Headley would have been apprehended well before the attacks.

NATGRID is a counter-terrorism measure that collects and collates a host of information from government databases including tax and bank account details, credit card transactions, visa and immigration records and itineraries of rail and air travel.

According to NATGRID's earlier plan, the combined data will be made available to 11 central agencies, which are: Research and Analysis Wing, Intelligence Bureau, Central Bureau of Investigation, Financial Intelligence Unit, Central Bureau of Investigation, Central Board of Direct Taxes, Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, Enforcement Directorate, Narcotics Control Bureau, Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs and the Directorate General of GST Intelligence.

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