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NEW DELHI: A fire at the headquarters of Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) on Tuesday night might have destroyed sensitive electronic data on financial frauds and records pertaining to tapped-phone conversations, including some politically sensitive cases.

The fire broke out, according to sources, in the Interception Room also known as DRI’s “secret room” at its 7th floor headquarters in the drum-shaped building at Indraprastha Estate in the Capital.

The fire brigade was informed at 10.28 pm and six fire tenders were despatched but the flames were doused using internal resources at the DRI office by 11.30 pm. No external fire safety measures were used, according to a fire brigade official.

But before the fire was doused, the blaze destroyed interception equipment and computers that stored sensitive data relating to money laundering, drug syndicates and foreign trade.

DRI has also been involved in investigation of politically sensitive cases and has provided inputs to other investigative agencies such as CBI and Enforcement Directorate. These have been part of the case files dealing with high net-worth individuals.

This may call for a full-fledged investigation by Intelligence Bureau as none of the other rooms seem to have suffered any impact while nothing of the stored intercepted data could be saved in the fire that damaged all the computers in the so-called secret room.

DRI is currently headless with a member of the Central Board of Excise and Customs holding additional charge since March.

Some of the corporate frauds DRI has pursued in the last few years ran into thousands of crores. It had also recently provided inputs to the government on Dawood gang on latter’s operation in Pakistan and also its contacts in India.

Besides financial frauds, the DRI closely monitors terrorist and narcotics activities and keeps a close watch on export oriented units that may be misused by these terror and anti-national outfits to channel funds for their sleeper cells operating in the country. In the past few years it had successfully neutralized several such terrorist and narcotics syndicates having links with Pakistan, Bangladesh, UAE and Nepal.

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This post was submitted by Chinmaya Nayak.

Thanks to timesofindia.indiatimes.com