A Shift from Crime to Terrorism: Assessing D-Company

By Ajey V Lele
SSPC Paper No. 4, December 2005

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Brief

Modern era has witnessed an enormous growth in transnational organized crime. Over the years such crime groups have covertly provided arms and ammunition to terrorist groups purely for business interests. However, the difference between organized crime and terrorism has blurred in last few years. Few crime organizations have shown a tendency of involving themselves in terrorist activities for non-profit reasons. This paper offers an analysis of the causes behind the changing philosophy and practices of one of the well-known crime organizations from India to move closer towards terrorism to support its criminal activities. The discussion is based on a specific case study carried out with the help of a ‘Model of criminal-terrorist relations’.

About the Author
Ajey Lele, Research Fellow, Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses (IDSA), New Delhi. He has been working on issues related to terrorism and WMD at IDSA. He is the author of Bio-Weapons: The Genie in the Bottle, Lancer India, 2004.