The Government has empowered the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to probe offences under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act in order to make it independent in terms of investigation of drug trade and linkages with terror funding.
The Revenue Department of Union Finance Ministry has issued a Gazette notification in this regard.
Section 53 of NDPS Act allows the Centre to entrust any officer with “the powers of a police station for the investigation of the offences under this Act.’’
The NIA was established as a federal anti-terror probe agency a year after the 26/11 Mumbai serial terror attacks to investigate terror crimes with inter-State or international ramifications. Through an amendment in the NIA Act last year, the agency was also empowered with the jurisdiction to probe cases related to human trafficking, counterfeit currency notes and cyber terrorism but narcotics cases were still out of its purview.
However, the latest Gazette notification signed by the Under Secretary in the Revenue Department of the Finance Ministry Biswajit Sarkar enlarges the authority of the NIA to probe drugs-related crimes.
Officials did not rule out the possibility of the NIA stepping into investigating the larger issues of drug-related crimes in Bollywood with suspected links to syndicates in foreign shores. The linkages of Bollywood personalities with drug consumption and involvement with drug syndicates has come to the fore following the probe by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) into the drug peddling network in connection with the mysterious death of film star Sushant Singh Rajput.
The Enforcement Directorate that is probing the money laundering aspect in a case related to Rajput’s death first flagged the drug connection in Bollywood. The CBI is separately probing the criminal aspect of the death of Rajput.
The empowerment of the NIA with probes into NDPS cases will also help the agency in systematically busting the linkages between terror modules and narco-terrorism especially those related to syndicates in Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab as also the Northeast and in Naxal-hit areas, officials added.