A proposal for creating a centralised pool of documentary evidence for expeditious sharing of actionable information on economic offences between various Central investigating agencies is pending consideration with the government.
The recommendation has been made to overcome the existing procedural and legal hurdles in sharing of evidence between the probe agencies like the Central Bureau of Investigation, the Enforcement Directorate, the Income-Tax Department and the Special Fraud Investigation Office.
As proposed, documentary proof gathered by the respective agencies would be stored at one place and its certified copies made available for the purposes of investigations and use as evidence in the court of law. Such an arrangement would require relevant amendments to the legislation governing each agency in terms of evidence collection.
Endorsing the idea, Navneet Rajan Wasan — who retired as Director-General of Bureau of Police Research and Development and has served in the Central Bureau of Investigation and the National Investigation Agency — said there should be a robust and transparent system of sharing information. It should have necessary backup of the law.
Stating that it would require use of data analytics for extracting relevant information, Mr. Wasan said such a mechanism could prove to be fruitful as agencies had been usually cagey in sharing evidence for various reasons.
Therefore, many a time, it becomes a time consuming exercise and delays investigations.
Published - July 07, 2018 01:41 am IST
