The bitter turf war between two premier counter-terror agencies — the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) and Intelligence Bureau (IB) — has now assumed a totally novel dimension. The state government has just sanctioned Rs 50 crores to the ATS to ensure that it upstages the Intelligence Bureau in cracking the Pune German Bakery blasts case.
This state government largesse in its “secret service funds” has come as a shot in the arm to the ATS, which has been reeling under the financial resource crunch that affected its operations in tapping the informant network and also hindered the development of a fresh chain of human intelligence.
So far, the IB that had been flush with cash had been poaching all the informants from other agencies, which derailed the discrete investigations of the ATS in the Pune blasts. The Maharashtra ATS has recently received a sum that sources say is in the range of Rs 50 crores, as a “secret service fund” from the state government. The fund is a liquid cash fund that the ATS chief can use at his discretion and for which no account is demanded.