NIA under Dinkar Gupta rejigs policies, shows results

When the 1987 batch Indian Police Service officer Dinkar Gupta was selected to lead the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in June last year, the agency was battling multiple challenges-lack of adequately skilled investigators, presence of officials in its ranks who were focusing more on other internal and external issues rather than the responsibilities that they were assigned with, senior officers shying away from taking initiatives and an overall sense of indecisiveness when it came to moving swiftly to tackle terror cells.

- ABHINANDAN MISHRA

Eight months later, things have turned around for the good. Within two months of joining, in the first-ever move that the NIA has seen in its 15 years of inception, Gupta brought in specialised officials from premier organizations like the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) and the Intelligence Bureau (IB) with the intention to have people who had the experience, training and the mindset to go after terror cells from scratch rather than waiting for information landing on their lap.

This was made possible by the strong networking that Gupta had across the bureaucracy and because Home Minister Amit Shah assured him complete support, provided he gave results. It was due to his excellent relations with his senior and junior officers, who were in other arms of the security apparatus, that Gupta faced little resistance in bringing men to the NIA through deputation.