Collecting electronic evidence to prevent attacks posing challenge to agencies: UNSC

NEW DELHI: The exponential rise in using the Internet and social media by terrorists in South Asia including India has been a challenge to the Law Enforcing Agencies (LEA) to prevent terror attacks and bringing terrorists and other criminals to justice, the United Nations Security Council flags in its latest report.

According to the report, the officials investigating and prosecuting terrorism, organized crime and other serious criminal cases regularly confront the challenge of how to obtain electronic evidence in trying to prevent attacks and in bringing terrorists and other criminals to justice.

The report also said that now India, the LEA have been familiar with the procedure and proficient in getting methods of collecting, preserving and analysing electronic evidence, as well with rules of admissibility for such evidence compared to 2016 when the last survey was done by the UN body.

Noting the predominant use of Internet, particularly social media platforms, to recruit new followers, the report said that terror outfits like Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed and Harkat Ul-Mujahidin keep their members motivated while many of these outfits have migrated to the dark web and encrypted platforms, creating additional difficulties for investigators and law enforcement officials.

The report said that India, like other nations in the sub- region are members of INTERPOL and all are well connected via their Narcotics Control Bureaus to INTERPOL databases and tools while it has also extended that connection to their frontline immigration and border-control authorities to monitor and check all arriving and departing passengers against the Stolen and Lost Travel Documents (SLTD) database, Red Notices, and the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq (ISIS) and Al-Qaeda Sanctions List, in real time to prevent entry.

The UN body also said that the 'Border management' in India has improved in recent times and the gaps in several key areas have been reduced.

There is visa-free travel among the member nations of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and other countries. India has updated and modernized its immigration records, passports and so-called breeder documents, which contributed to the improvement of border security in the region.

Although the facility of 'Visa on Arrival' is convenient for tourists, but there have been several instances where the terrorists and other criminals have been exploiting this arrangement. They can also exploit visa-free arrangements and open borders to adopt evasive or broken travel patterns, thereby preventing officials from determining where a traveller has been prior to his or her arrival. In visa-free or visa-upon-arrival regimes, API and PNR systems may provide the only meaningful way to identify potential FTFs, terrorists and other criminals.

Appreciating India's Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) initiative to freeze the assets of organizations or persons supporting or involved in terror acts, the UNSC said that the MHA has issued a detailed procedure outlining the obligations of all persons in the implementation of targeted financial sanctions but the rest of the countries have not improved materially since the previous survey done in 2016.

The investigative capacity in the South Asia region remains hampered by insufficient coordination and communication among those agencies, as well as overlapping areas of responsibility and jurisdiction. Although three states of this sub-region — India, Maldives and Pakistan — have recognized this gap and created national counter-terrorism coordinating agencies, there is room for further improvement in the sub-region, the UNSC report said. (IANS)

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