New Delhi, April 8 (IANS) The recent busting of several terror modules created to strike in India has revealed a new pattern. There is not one single group that the members of these modules are attached to. The Faridabad module had members who were part of the Jaish-e-Mohammad. However, the ideology that they largely subscribed to was that of the Islamic State.

Take the most recent case in which the Delhi Police and Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) arrested two persons. They had links with both the Islamic State and the Jaish-e-Mohammad, the probe found.

An Intelligence Bureau official said that this is a new ploy whereby members of a module are no longer attached to a single group but are inspired by terror groups. This also signals a dangerous trend, whereby persons are coming together on their own and forming terror groups. The agenda of the ISI is clear, and it wants groups to be self-created.

Owing to India’s zero-tolerance policy on terror, especially after the Pahalgam attack, Pakistan does not want any direct involvement in setting up terror groups. To achieve this, it has picked individuals in Pakistan, again not those directly with terror groups, to spread propaganda on social media.

Following Operation Sindoor, the agencies have found that the propaganda campaign by many Pakistani handles has gone up multi-fold. This is exactly what the Islamic State has been doing for years now. Such propaganda manages to pull in the youth who are constantly bombarded with material that inspires them to set up terror groups with a bunch of like-minded people.

There are also many cases in which the youth have tried to act on their own. Another official explained that at first, propaganda material such as Jihadi literature is bombarded on social media or on encrypted messaging groups. These handlers then keep a close watch on how the material is being consumed. They also follow closely who is consuming the material. Once they find a group of people who have consumed the material in a similar manner, then the networking takes place.

The Pakistani handlers introduce these people to each other so that they can coordinate and set up a terror module.

Barring the terror attacks that took place in Jammu and Kashmir in recent years, all the rest of the incidents have been attributed to self-inspired terror modules.

Jamesha Rubin, who planned to blow up a temple in Coimbatore, was self-inspired. He followed the ideology of the Islamic State, which was widely propagated by the Sri Lanka Easter Bombing mastermind, Zahran Hashim. Mubeen was acting on his own and raised funds for the operation largely by himself.

The Rameshwaram Cafe blast carried out in Bengaluru on March 1, 2024, was the handiwork of two Islamic State-inspired terrorists, Mussavir Hussain and Abdul Mateen Talha. Mohammad Shariq and Syed Yasin, who were part of the failed Mangaluru blast case, too, were inspired by the Islamic State.

An official said that each one of these incidents was self-insured, and the probe showed that none of these persons had a link. The only similarity between all of them was that they were self-inspired and followed the same ideology.

The ISI, while setting up this new strategy, had instructed the handlers to let the recruits choose the terror group of their choice. None should be pressured into joining one particular group, the ISI instructed.

The propaganda will be put out there, and recruits can pick their terror group, according to the new strategy.

Even the handlers and recruiters who are flooding the social media with Jihadi literature do not belong to any one terror group, the official added. Another official said that increasingly this would be the strategy which the ISI would use. It gets deniability, the risk of operations is low and also cost-effective.

–IANS

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