Discuss the types of organised crimes. Describe the linkages between terrorists and organised crime that…

Question

Discuss the types of organised crimes. Describe the linkages between terrorists and organised crime that exist at the national and transnational levels.

Ghissu Editorial · Accepted Answer

Organised crime ranges from extortion and trafficking to financial and cyber crime, and it links with terror nationally through insurgent extortion and gangster networks and transnationally through syndicates, drugs and hawala. Dawood Ibrahim's smuggling network landed the RDX used in the 1993 Bombay blasts.

**Introduction**

The UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (2000) defines organised crime as serious crime committed in concert for material benefit, and the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita 2023 defines it in Section 111. Tamara Makarenko's crime-terror continuum shows how profit-seeking crime and political terror converge.

**Types of Organised Crime**

1. **Traditional rackets**: Extortion, contract killing, illicit liquor and land-grabbing by city gangs, which Maharashtra's MCOCA (1999) was enacted to break.
2. **Trafficking crimes**: Smuggling of drugs, arms, people and wildlife through porous borders, with India a transit country between the Golden Crescent and Golden Triangle.
3. **Financial and new-age crimes**: Hawala, counterfeit currency, cyber fraud, illegal mining and the cyber-scam compounds of Myanmar that trap trafficked Indians.

**Crime-Terror Linkages at National and Transnational Levels**

SKETCH: spectrum | Crime-Terror Continuum
left: Pure crime
right: Pure terror
- Alliance
- Borrowed tactics
- Convergence
- Black hole

1. **National: insurgent economies**: Northeast factions tax traders and Maoists levy cuts on tendu leaf and mining, so crime funds insurgency.
2. **National: gangster-terror nexus**: NIA cases from 2022 exposed Punjab gangs working for Khalistani handlers abroad, and gangster Goldy Brar was designated a terrorist under UAPA in 2024.
3. **Transnational: syndicates and drugs**: Dawood Ibrahim's network landed the RDX for the 1993 Bombay blasts, and the NIA traced 532 kg of heroin seized at Attari in 2019 to Hizbul Mujahideen.

**Conclusion**

Crime gives terror money, weapons and logistics while terror gives crime protection, a force multiplier for both. Shared NIA, NCB and ED intelligence and FATF-standard tracking can break it, advancing SDG 16.4 on illicit financial and arms flows.

Discuss the types of organised crimes. Describe the linkages between terrorists and organised crime that exist at the national and transnational levels.

Model answer

Practise this question

Organized Crime and Terrorism6 questions

Ghissu