ISI backed handlers have switched to Facebook to communicate with and radicalise youths in the Kashmir valley, and incite them to pelt stones. This comes after the security agencies successfully infiltrated into WhatsApp groups that were being managed by these handlers.
Earlier, the security agencies had identified at least 300 WhatsApp groups through which stone pelting was being organised.
The administrators of these groups were individuals who were using Pakistani numbers, and they would give directions to local Kashmiri youths to converge on sites where security forces were engaged in encounters with terrorists and help the latter to escape. However, for the last six-seven months, the intelligence agencies were able to successfully stop this modus operandi by arresting individuals and ring leaders who were managing the stone pelters and by arresting the stone pelters. After this, as per the government’s own admission, there was a 90% decrease in stone pelting incidents. This has resulted in an increased number of terrorists (190 by the last official count) being eliminated by the security forces in the Kashmir valley.
“Stone pelting is an organised, managed protest and it cannot be done unless there is a free flowing communication between the actors involved,” an official with a security establishment explained.
Perturbed by this, the ISI backed handlers are now using Facebook to connect with the ring leaders and youths based in Kashmir. As their new modus operandi, they now create a Facebook page or an individual profile, the details of which are shared in the WhatsApp group in which the time period during which the profile will be active is also shared. During the decided time, the profile, which is being managed by the handlers, gets active, generally for one hour and during this period, the stone pelters and their ring leaders are added as friends so that they can chat with the handlers and the necessary information and direction is shared. After that, the profile is deactivated. Security agencies identified this modus operandi after maintaining sustained cyber surveillance and are now devising ways to “handle” this new method.
“Communicating through WhatsApp groups was their preferred way, but now they are finding new ways so that they are not identified; like every organisation, they too are adapting. We are taking steps to tackle this adaptation too,” the official mentioned above said.