Centre planning specialised intelligence outfit to investigate and scrutinise the cyber space

New Delhi: Having been caught on the wrong foot on the issue of a Bengaluru based techie, Mehdi Masroor Biswas, managing a pro-ISIS Twitter account, the Centre is now planning a specialised intelligence outfit to investigate and scrutinise the cyber space.

Even though various Central and state intelligence agencies have cyber cells or units but till now there is no expert intelligence agency to deal exclusively with the issues of terror and organised crime on the virtual world.

Sources said a section of the Union government is believed to be upset with central intelligence agencies for the failure to track Biswas’s Twitter handle and that it required a media organisation to expose that the IS sympathiser was indeed operating from the Indian soil.

There is a growing sense within the government that the entire incident might have slipped through the cracks primarily because even though a number of agencies are involved in intelligence gathering, no one is focusing exclusively on acts of terror on the cyber space.

There is a possibility, sources said, that the new outfit might be carved out of the Intelligence Bureau, which has a specialised cyber unit.