New Delhi, April 25: The Dhirendra Singh committee on police reform has asked the Centre to make confessions before a superintendent of police admissible as evidence during trial and revive the concept of federal offences to empower central agencies to investigate crimes with interstate and international ramifications.

The report, submitted to home minister Shivraj Patil by home secretary Dhirendra Singh before he demitted office last month, has also sought an amendment to the Criminal Procedure Code to ensure that witnesses sign and be given a copy of statements recorded by police personnel.

Section 162 of the CrPC currently bars police officers from getting statements signed by witnesses.

The suggestions come in the backdrop of the security establishment complaining that the UPA government had faltered by repealing the anti-terror legislation last year.

The Centre has circulated the report among state governments for comments and asked them to formulate legislation on the lines of the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act and set up units to deal with organised crime.

A senior police officer pointed to the extensive use of the Maharashtra law against suspected terrorists, saying there was a very thin line between terrorism and organised crime.

Each state might end up with anti-terror legislation if the governments, especially those ruled by the BJP, accept this part of the report.

The Dhirendra Singh panel has also revived the concept of federal offences pushed by L.K. Advani during his six years in North Block and recommended that the government put crimes with interstate and international ramifications on the Union list of the Constitution. This will enable central agencies to take up investigations into serious crimes without depending on the whims and fancies of the state government.

Congress-ruled states opposed this when Advani tried to push it through, but it is not clear if they will react the same way if Patil pushes it.

The home minister is learnt to have been open to the concept of federal offences but recognises the difficulty in implementing this provision.

?It will require central agencies to set up offices in every state and a significant infusion of funds and manpower,? said a home ministry official.

An understaffed CBI, the only central investigative agency of the government, can take up cases only if the state government seeks its intervention.

The panel?s report also seeks legislative amendments that would restrict the powers of police to make arrests in specified crimes such as murder, robbery and dacoity.

The home ministry argues that the wide powers of the police to arrest people are used by delinquent elements in the establishment to harass people for money and also result in people staying behind bars as undertrials.