ISIS module busted in Kashmir, five arrested

Five members of the Islamic State of Jammu & Kashmir (ISJK), who had planned to attack an Army camp in Kashmir valley, were arrested by the police from Bandipora district on Saturday.

Official sources said that acting on a specific input, the Bandipora district police arrested five terror associates of the ISJK or Wilayah-al-Hind, the regional branch of the pan-Islamist terror group, ISIS.

Four of them are from different places in Bandipora and one is from Srinagar, sources said. Incriminating material including matrix sheets, ISJK flags and ammunition was recovered from their possession.

On preliminary inquiry, police sources said, it was found that these five members of the ISJK carried out a recee of an army camp as they planned to attack it. The module was also providing support to the terror group in the valley and motivating and radicalising youth to join their terror ranks.

Sources said the group was manufacturing flags of the ISJK in Chittibandy Aragam and further supplying them to their associates in Srinagar.

The police has filed a case under Unlawful Activities Prevention Act at police Station Aragam and are further investigating the case.

A small number of youth in Kashmir began supporting ISIS when the terror group assumed prominence in 2014 with its use of social media to run their propaganda videos of barbaric executions. Masked youth were frequently seen waving pro-Caliphate ISIS flags in downtown Srinagar.

By 2017, black ISIS shrouds began replacing Pakistani green flags which had been used as cerements to wrap slain terrorists in their funerals in Kashmir. Last year, an ISJK terrorist was killed by Hizbul Mujahideen following which the ISJK had declared that Pakistan-backed terror groups in Kashmir were traitors to the cause of Islamic jihad.

ISIS, in an official announcement last year, acknowledged that it has set up its India brancha "Wilayah-al-Hinda" after its operative Ishfaq Ahmad Sofi was killed in an encounter with security forces in Shopian in south Kashmir..