NEW DELHI: The Union home ministry has formed a new cell which will focus on effectively dealing with funding of terrorist activities in the country.
A special attention was being paid for terror funding of separatists and terror groups in Kashmir and the constitution of combating of funding of terrorist (CFT) is a step in this direction, officials said.
Besides this, a terror funding and fake currency (TFFC) cell in National Investigation Agency (NIA) has also been constituted to focus on investigating the flow of money into anti-national activities, the officials said.
Minister of state for home Jitendra Singh informed the Lok Sabha that 43 cases of terror funding have been registered since 2009 by various state and central probe agencies.A multi-disciplinary group at the state and central level has been entrusted with the responsibility of enquiring into the sources of funding of Kashmiri terrorists, he said.
CFT will be the first-ever such cell and function under the ministry of home affairs, but will be headed by an officer of the Indian Revenue Service (Income Tax), they said.
It will be a nodal office among various probe agencies to deal exclusively with cases of terror financing and instances of money laundering for such activities.
The cell will liaise with agencies like the department of revenue intelligence (DRI), Intelligence Bureau (IB), Income Tax Department, Enforcement Directorate, CBI and Directorate General of Customs and Central Excise Intelligence and later scrutinise information collected from central police organisations and the financial intelligence unit. (PTI)