CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu police on Saturday accused BJP state president K Annamalai of spreading rumours on the Coimbatore car blast and attempting to divert the investigation. A press release from the DGP office said whenever such incidents happen, as per rule, it is the local police that must investigate. If the police invoke the UAPA or the NIA Act, 2008, police is bound by section 6 of the NIA Act to submit a report to the respective state government. This report will be forwarded to the Union government, which, within 15 days, must decide if the case must be handled by NIA.
“In reality, sometimes it takes months for the Union government to come to a decision. Similarly, some state police take several months to hand over the reports,” read the press release. In the case of the Coimbatore blast, TN government responded before the Centre transferred the case to NIA.The press release also termed as false the claims made by Annamalai that TN police received information from central intelligence.
The circular sent from Delhi was common to all states and did not contain any specific detail. “If TN police had known that a blast would happen in such a place, it would have conducted a raid and arrested the persons and seized the substances.”
In response to the press release, Annamalai tweeted: “A point-by-point rebuttal will be given to the press statement of Tamil Nadu police soon. With the highest respect to the hardworking brothers & sisters of TN Police, the DGP and ADGP (Int) of our state police behave like an extension of the Arivalayam office. Our complaint was especially against the two top officers for failing their basic duties, and no wonder they gave a press release in the name of the TN Police force to protect themselves.”