Union Home Minister Amit Shah has directed the Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPR&D) to study protests that have taken place since Independence, with particular focus on those after 1974, in order to analyse their causes, financial aspects, outcomes, and “behind-the-scene players."
According to the report, the aim of the exercise is to prepare a standard operating procedure (SOP) to prevent “mass agitations by vested interests” in the future. Shah issued the instructions during the ‘National Security Strategies Conference-2025’ in Delhi, organised by the Intelligence Bureau in July.
“The BPR&D has been specifically asked to analyse reasons, patterns and outcomes of those protests, including behind-the-scenes players,” a senior government official said.
“It has been directed that an SOP should be formulated based on the outcome of the study to prevent mass agitations by vested interests in the future,” the official added.
The BPR&D, which functions under the Home Ministry, is in the process of setting up a team to coordinate with police departments of various states to access case files and reports, including those of their Crime Investigation Departments, the report stated.
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The report further noted that Shah instructed the BPR&D to work closely with Central agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate (ED), the Financial Intelligence Unit-India (FIU-IND) and the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) to assess the “financial aspects” of protests.
“Additionally, in order to dismantle terror funding networks, the ED, FIU-IND, and CBDT have been asked to develop an SOP to identify unknown terror networks, their linkages and designs through analysis of financial irregularities,” the report quoted officials as saying.
Sources also told The Indian Express that Shah directed the National Investigation Agency (NIA), the Border Security Force (BSF) and the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) to draft separate methodologies for tackling Khalistani extremism and broader criminal activities in Punjab.
“The intelligence agencies should constitute a team of officers with good background knowledge of Punjab-related issues for developing a framework of different approaches to deal with these issues,” a government official was quoted as saying.
According to the report, Shah further instructed the NIA to adopt an “out-of-the-box approach” to dismantle “domestic nodes of the terror-criminal nexus,” which could include transferring imprisoned criminals who run networks from jails in Punjab to prisons in other parts of the country.
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