A SPECIAL intelligence cell costing £5 million has been set up to combat organised crime after the number of murders among South Asians has more than tripled in the last decade.

Assistant Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur, the Head of the Met's Specialist Crime Directorate, is calling on South Asian Londoners, which includes Tamils, Sikhs, Pakistanis, Bengalis and Indians, to report members of their community who are involved in organised crime after the number of murders rose from just ten in 1993 to 38 last year.

Ealing is one of the main hot spots for South Asian crime and of the areas this new cell is targeting. Mr Ghaffur said: "Over recent months I have received representations from many South Asian Londoners who are concerned at the rise of serious crime within their community.

"The murder rate for South Asians has tripled in the last decade. There is evidence that gun violence, and drugs trafficking offences are on the increase. And kidnap offences in particular give cause for concern. In 2003 there were 228 kidnaps involving Asian victims compared with 90 in 1998."

The new unit will work along the same basis as the Met's Operation Trident, which aims to cut the number of violent black on black crimes within the community.

Members of the South Asian community will be invited to work with police to see how the unit can work.

The stigma of talking to police and working with the police is quite high amongst South Asians but Cllr Sonika Nirwal believes people will welcome this approach.

She said: "It's quite a delicate issue because no particular community wants the finger pointing at them to say there is a problem so people will want to help police as much as possible and something like this is always welcome."

An independent advisory group will be set up by Mr Ghaffur in the next few months to help the police determine where the problems are and how they can be policed and officers will spend the first eight weeks scoping the problem.

The unit should be fully operational in the next 12 months and members of the South Asian community will be asked to give it a suitable name.