SRINAGAR – Occupied Jammu and Kashmir Police has a new task at hand –identify the ‘keypad jehadis’ on social networking sites to try and createa law and order situation in the state.
The police has registered cases against five twitter handles and filedcomplaints with service providers against such posts on Facebook andWhatsApp so that necessary action is taken at the earliest, officials havesaid. The officials said a communication had been sent to themicro-blogging site for providing details of the twitter handles so thatpunitive action could be initiated at the earliest as it would help inreining in what is called ‘keypad jehadis’.
Police has laid special emphasis on monitoring the social networkingwebsites and also various groups created on messaging services likeWhatsApp, Telegram and similar such tools available on the Internet, theysaid.The idea behind the crackdown on ‘keypad jehadis’ was to ensure thatpolice could concentrate more on nabbing or eliminating terrorists withreal guns rather than those who wage war against the state machinery usingkeypads.
The officials said that post-2016, the campaign from some groups in Kashmiras well as in Jammu was at its peak with each party trying to project anincident for their political goals which had a potential of pushing thestate to communal clashes.
They said the new battleground and a new battle is far removed from theconventional weaponry and the conventional fighting zones of the narrowstreets and forests where new age jehadis use computers and smartphones towage war from just about anywhere in the Valley or outside, well entrenchedinside their homes or out on the streets, from a nearby caf or even just aconvenient roadside.”We have passed on several complaints to the ComputerEmergency Response Team-India (CERT-IN) for blocking several pages onFacebook and Twitter,” said officials, adding that many SIM cards whichwere used to spread canards on messaging services like WhatsApp have beenblocked with the help of the service provider.
The immediate worry for security agencies is the forthcoming two-month longAmarnath Yatra, beginning last week of next month, and they fear thatanyone, while just sitting from the confines of a home, can plant fake newsin one of the thousand chat groups and the entire state can plunge intocommunal violence, the officials said. They claimed there have beeninstances when pictures of desecration of shrines are circulated by aparticular community and all of sudden there is an outrage when no suchincident had taken place.
Similarly, in the Valley, news about firing and subsequent killing ofcivilians was circulated in an attempt to create unrest in other parts ofKashmir. However, timely action saved the day for the police and it wasensured that the culprits were booked.There have also been instances ofcirculation of photo-shopped pictures of ordinary civilians as militantswhereas the unknown victim would have been attending his daily duties. “Wehad many such cases including the one in Ganderbal where picture of ashopkeeper was circulated with an assault rifle as having joined a militantgroup.” “On inquiry we found that he was selling his groceries and one ofhis business rivals had played the mischief. A case was registered underrelevant sections of Information and Technology act and the accused wasarrested,” a senior police official said.
“It is a virtual battleground where a bloody war is fought, but with words.However, this has an impact on the young minds,” the officer said. Thesocial chat groups are active not just in Jammu and Kashmir. They areseeing participation from youngsters in the national capital, rest of thecountry and abroad as well. In the Valley, social media access had beencontrolled to a large extent after authorities clamped down on over twodozen websites but the problem in Jammu and other parts of the countrycontinues.