Govt orders quarterly review of fugitive lists
The Indian Home Ministry directed all states, union territories and investigating agencies to update their list of the most wanted fugitives every three months after the recent spree of gaffes sprouting from the lists, left the government egg-faced.
The Home Ministry has already directed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to scrutinize, verify and revise the list, a top official said on Friday.
“The Home Ministry has directed the CBI, IB and NIA to coordinate with each other and prepare a revised and correct list after authentication. After it is prepared, we may send it to Pakistan,” the official told media on conditions of anonymity.
A dead HuJI member and a Northeast militant leader are the two more latest errors that tumbled out of the CBI and Indian Home Ministry’s Most Wanted List.
The errors came after two similar errors were spotted in the list of 50 most wanted fugitives sent to Pakistan by India to search within its own borders. One of the ‘fugitives’ was found to be residing in a Mumbai locality, and the other one in a Mumbai prison.
Consequent discoveries of embarrassing bloopers in the past few days on the list of Indian offenders hiding in Pakistan embarassed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and they took off their Most Wanted list from their website.
On Monday, “Most Wanted” Wazhul Khan was found residing in Mumbai though his name featured in the list sent to Pakistan. Three days later another wanted person named Feroze Ahmad Rashid Khan was found in a Mumbai jail.
Indian home minister P Chidambaram has admitted the lapses, but the livid Opposition slammed the government for trivializing the fight against terror and offering Pakistan a weapon to deny India’s contention on terrorists hiding in that country.
