Globally, doctors, scientists, and teachers are the most trusted professions. Other professions with high but variable trust (depending on the country and corruption levels) include armed forces personnel, judges, and police. Fraudsters, criminal gangs, terrorist organisations, and anarchists of all kinds, infiltrate these professions to get a respectable cover for their nefarious activities and misuse professional facilities and logistics without raising suspicion.
An insider in the forensics department helps alter or hide autopsy findings and test reports. To avoid a law-and-order situation, police inform university authorities in advance, before entering the campus, giving criminals inside enough time to cover up. On May 20, 2020, Islamic State of J&K (ISJK) armed terrorists travelled in a private ambulance from South Kashmir to Srinagar, and after the terror attack, they fled back to their safe hideout in another ambulance. After the car bomb on 10 November 2025, in Delhi, investigators found an AK-47 rifle from a former doctor's locker at GMC Anantnag. Doctors at a derecognised university hospital had clandestinely collected explosives and old cars for use as car bombs.
Doctors and medical facilities function based on trust. Misuse of this trust, misinformation (as with the polio vaccine in Pakistan), and corruption in both hospitals and colleges will lead to the collapse of health services.
AN ENABLING CORRUPT SYSTEM:
Corrupt, unethical institution founders, financiers, administrators, regulators, police, lawyers, teachers, and doctors have enabled the setting up of many clandestine colleges and universities, falsely claiming to have accreditation and misleading students and their parents, and issuing fake certificates.
There are also fake doctors or quacks practising unhindered by regulatory authorities, who ignore those not registered with them. Terrorists and criminals are easily able to infiltrate fake institutions both here and abroad with indoctrinated students, who later qualify by corrupt means, using terror funding often by cryptocurrency or “hawala” routes, from coerced or misled legitimate sources like businesses or charities, or from illegal activities such as drug and human trafficking, kidnapping, and extortion. Drones across borders, underwater carrier drones, and the dark net are among many new enablers of criminal and terror activities.
DOUBLE AGENTS:
- These unethical agents of death, masquerading as healthcare professionals, are full of hate, with no remorse, guilt, empathy, or compassion, the antithesis of the Hippocratic Oath taken by doctors and what society expects of doctors.
- They are like double agents living a double life, in a state of "forced inauthenticity," involving extreme compartmentalization, to manage the constant need for deception to maintain their cover and betray their employers.
- They are driven by a combination of factors like ideological conviction, financial gain, personal grievances, or coercion.
- They often have antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), characterized by a persistent pattern of deceit, impulsivity, aggression, and a failure to conform to social norms. This is unlike the "Dual personality," or "Split personality disorder", or Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), a psychotic condition, where an individual has two or more distinct identities or personalities/personality states at different times.
- The choice of the medical profession is to hide their real identity and purpose, misuse trusted hospital facilities, learn about deadly plant toxins from castor bean (Ricin), apple seeds (amygdalin), oleander (oleandrin), water hemlock (cicutoxin), and rosary pea (abrin), etc.
- They also learn to be good actors who are experts both at “creative immersion” in a villain’s role and deliberate "de-rolling" to act as a hero, and can control their body language and emotions to cheat the lie detector (polygraph) test.
RADICALIZATION AND THE RADICALIZED (The problem):
- Extreme ideologies opposing the political, social, or religious status quo lead to violence and anarchy. Indoctrination is the process of teaching someone to accept a set of beliefs or doctrines without question or criticism.
- Radical religious, social, or political ideological indoctrination is done at a very young age, before children develop the capacity for independent critical thinking.
- Youth are manipulated through gifts and baits, misinformation about the system of governance, judiciary, and civil society, inflammatory speeches, coercion, peer pressure, and the use of mind-altering drugs.
- The thrill of following a “noble” cause, “revolution”, “liberty”, or “revenge” overcomes moral conflict and guilt of heinous acts and facilitates indoctrination.
- Children growing up in a violent environment and a chaotic society are easily convinced to blame prosperous, progressive societies for their status and to seek revenge through mindless violence.
- Lonely, abused, marginalized, discriminated, alienated, rebellious, desperate, and angry youth who feel betrayed, hate the world around them, and believe they are smart and deserve better are most susceptible to being indoctrinated by cults and extremists. The gullible who follow the crowd like sheep make excellent foot soldiers and cannon fodder.
- Those with mental health conditions, a history of previous suicide attempts, and individuals experiencing major life stressors or discrimination, are persuaded to become suicide bombers, with a promise of financial help for their family and a better next life.
IDENTIFICATION, REFORM, AND DERADICALIZATION (Diagnosis and Treatment):
- Radicalized elements need to be identified by their withdrawal into their own rigid world view, obsession with ideology, intolerance, hate speech, and social media posts using slogans, coded terms, or rhetoric associated with extremist groups, portraying society, government, or certain groups as enemies, justifying or praising violent acts as necessary or heroic.
- Delhi car bomber referring to fedayeen operation as martyrdom operation and differentiating it from suicide attacks, is typical of the moral dilemmas of the brainwashed. He was attempting to inspire others by portraying his actions as necessary for a desirable and praiseworthy cause.
- Drug and grooming gangs and human traffickers also need to be identified, as the victims can be blackmailed into criminal and terrorist activities. Those justifying heinous acts are worse than abettors of suicide.
- Online checking of the authenticity of institutional and professional registration/accreditation should be enabled to help identify quacks and fraudsters.
- Rewards and phone/app/website should be set up to encourage civic vigilance and whistleblowers.
- Regulatory, enforcement, tax, and investigative agencies should shed silos and work as a cohesive task force with intelligence sharing and the use of AI to detect and follow suspicious money trails of dubious “charitable,” communal, and educational institutions and shut them down.
- Deradicalization is the process of critically examining and changing an individual's or group's extreme political, social, or religious views to more moderate ones, to reject violence, victimhood, and adopt more liberal views. It involves psychological counselling and therapy for personal grievances, trauma, or identity crises; social and community-based mentorship programs by peers, designed to help individuals disengage from extremist ideologies and reintegrate into society. Global examples include Saudi Arabia’s “Counselling Program”, Germany’s “Hayat Program”, and Singapore’s Religious Rehabilitation Group.
- Reforming criminals and prison rehabilitation programs combine counselling, education, and monitoring.
- Strict regulation of mind-altering drugs and deaddiction efforts are essential to protect our society and civilization.
PREVENTION AND MOTIVATION:
- The most effective way to identify and prevent radicalization is through awareness, dialogue, and support systems by the person’s family and community.
- Airport-like security is necessary for hospitals and educational institutions, including face and car KYC recognition security cameras, metal, drug, and explosives detectors, or sniffer dogs, to protect health staff, teachers, and children from violence and sexual assault, and prevent firearms, knives, explosives, and drugs from being smuggled in.
- Psychological fitness assessment and background verification done in recruitment to security and intelligence services should be done for recruiting bureaucrats, administrators, regulators, judiciary, professionals, and selecting students for professional courses.
- A car should be handed over to a new owner only after registration is confirmed in the new owner’s identity, just like what is enforced for SIM cards.
- Good governance, absence of corruption, exploitation, and discrimination, assured, timely, and fair justice, ethical and alert media, and a peaceful, tolerant, progressive society are a great motivating force for the youth to pursue their ambitions and reject extremism and internal and external anarchist forces.
- Education is more than imparting knowledge; it cultivates personal and social skills like communication, empathy, and creativity, and develops the ability to think critically and solve problems. Hence, it is anathema to those seeking to brainwash and manipulate minds.
- The famous music director Salil Chowdhury was most concerned that fanatics would silence the voice of reason. With determination and unity, we are winning the war against Naxalist ideology, and we can win the war against terrorists and establish a just, peaceful, progressive national ethos.
Dr. P.S. Venkatesh Rao is a Consultant Surgeon, Former Faculty CMC (Vellore), AIIMS (New Delhi), and a polymath in Bengaluru.
