The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has completed its probe in the Jammu and Kashmir Terrorism Conspiracy case, filed in October 2021, and subsequently submitted a charge sheet against 25 persons, including a woman, in the Special NIA Court New Delhi on Friday.
All the 25 accused, whose residences have been searched in a series of raids in the last six months and who have been arrested from different places, are from the Kashmir valley. They have been booked and detained under different sections of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and Indian Penal Code.
The case pertains to hatching of conspiracy, both in physical domain as well as cyberspace, for planning and facilitating violent terrorist acts in J&K and other parts of the country by cadres of the outlawed terrorist organisations like Laskhar-e-Tayyiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM) and Al-Badr.
According to the NIA, the accused were operating some networks of over-ground workers and hybrid terrorists associated with the known terror organisations’ front outfits such as the Resistance Front (TRF), People Anti-Fascist Forces (PAFF), United Liberation Front J&K (ULF), Muslim Janbaaz Force (MJF), Kashmir Janbaaz Force (KJF), Kashmir Tigers, Kashmir Fight, Mujahideen Gazwat-ul-Hind and Kashmir Gaznavi Force. These front banners had suddenly mushroomed to claim responsibility for the known terror organisations’ subversive actions, NIA said.
The investigation has unearthed a deep rooted conspiracy of Pakistan-based terror groups joining hands in form of a united group. According to NIA, these front organisations had been floated tactfully to claim responsibility for the terror actions of the known organisations to provide them camouflage and deniability at the international level after abrogation of Article 370.
The investigation has established that all the new banners were actually rechristened versions of the familiar terror organisations based in Pakistan and “floated under a deep-rooted conspiracy to portray terrorism in J&K as home-grown insurgency”.
“A well-organised propaganda machinery operating on cyberspace through various websites, blogs, social media handles, closed channels on encrypted communication platforms etc. wherein concocted and skewed narrative is presented to impressionable minds and the Pakistan-based nodes have been used to radicalize youth. Investigation has revealed that all this media propaganda of different terrorist outfits was epicentred around common nodes operating from Pakistan”, the NIA spokesperson said.
“A key element of the aforementioned conspiracy was to induct new cadres in the form of ‘hybrid terrorists’ belonging to various walks of life, who could use their cover to remain rooted in the society and simultaneously carry out instructions of their terrorist handlers. While acting as an OGW, they were also found indulging in terrorist actions such as grenade lobbing, undertaking lone attacks on vulnerable targets, arson etc.” said the NIA spokesperson.
“The investigation has also revealed a clear shift in the strategy of terrorist organization towards targeted killings of minorities, civilians, migrants, government officials and unguarded security personnel”, the NIA spokesperson said. This is for the first time in recent years that this big number of terror operatives has been booked and arrested in a single case.
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