Facing linguistic problems in handling cases related to terror activities, left wing extremism, and fake Indian currency notes, the National Investigation Agency (NIA ) has decided to engage private players to translate and interpret 23 Indian languages including, Bhojpuri, Gujarati, Kannada, Konkani, Urdu, Kashmiri and Marathi.
The agency has also sought help of private players for translation of 40 foreign languages, including Polish, Norwegian, Kazak, French and Greek. In total, the agency has decided to rope in private players for 63 languages. Sources said the agency has decided to rope in private players since it found it difficult to make headway with huge volume of anti-nation literatures and document, they recovered during various raids across the country.
In a recent case of terror funding, the agency faced problems in interpreting statements of accused persons in Kashmiri language and also during interrogation of the accused. The agency also faced problems in cases related to extortion and unlawful collection by National Socialist Council of Nagaland — Khaplang militants from individuals and organisations.
“The NIA does not have a linguistically diverse staff so we are seeking help from private players. We first decided to seek help in foreign languages in which our team members are mostly ignorant. Then we decided to engaged them for both Indian and foreign languages,” said a senior officer.
The officer said the NIA, which came in existence in January 2009 in the aftermath of the Mumbai terror attack in November 2008, has taken up a total of 185 cases for investigation in the last nine years. Out of these 185 cases, 64 cases pertain to ‘jehadi’ terrorism, 26 terrorist acts by North- East insurgents, 42 cases of terror financing and fake currency, 15 cases involving left wing extremism while the remaining 38 cases relate to other miscellaneous terrorist acts and gangs. These cases cover the entire spectrum of terrorism related challenges which India faces, and have involved investigative efforts in 28 States and Union Territories.
In many cases, the agency faced language problems while communicating with the arrested accused and going through the documents seized from them but temporarily the sleuths probing those cases took help of local translators. But now the agency Director General Yogesh Chander Modi has decided to engage professionals as investigation in terror cases in not limited to India itself.