DNA Edit: NIA raids - The ISIS has found a way into India

The ISIS threat may have receded in Iraq and Syria, but not from India. Just when everyone thought that the world had seen the back of terror organisations in their own backyard, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Wednesday detained 10 persons in Delhi and UP for their suspected involvement in a new ISIS-inspired terror module.

According to investigators, the nabbing came in the nick of time, as conspirators were planning blasts in North India, particularly in the national capital. On their list of targets were high profile offices and establishments. Had they been successful, it would have been just the oxygen needed by a terror organisation to make its presence felt in this country.

Christened Harkat ul Harb-e-Islam, five of the 10 held belonged to Amroha in western UP. With a vast cache of arms, ammunition and money, the group appeared not just highly motivated, but well armed. Coincidentally, the raids have come two days after this paper stressed the need to keep an eye on indoctrinated youth who had gone for training to ISIS camps in Iraq and Syria (Preventing new Terrorists, December 24).

India’s security establishment must be commended for not being lax. According to investigators both in Lucknow and Delhi, who carried out the joint raids, the suspects had been kept under surveillance for some time now. As an operation, it was coordinated and planned with precision and the results showed.

The more worrying trend, however, is the involvement of the accused, all of whom appear educated belonging to respectable middle class backgrounds. Why should such young men, who are by no means impoverished, come under the spell of a foreign terrorist ideology and become highly radicalised, needs serious thinking.

Unlike the other indoctrinated men of the 1990s and later, who were lured to Pakistan, trained and sent back to India for purposes of sabotage, those held in the NIA raids are more like New Age terrorists.

Their brainwashing comes through the Internet, where they keep in touch with their handlers on locations thousands of kilometre away from the Indian mainland. Tactics, planning and personal contacts are made online, without arousing any suspicion in the neighbourhood or the immediate family.

In other words, the only way to keep an eye on such elements is to scrutinise their mails, chat platforms and all other forms of social media, which these days are the principle mode of communications, both inside and outside the country.

It would also be incorrect to treat this issue as a pure law and order subject. Neither would it be prudent to leave everything in the hands of security forces and the government. Society has to step in to win the trust of such impressionable young minds and religious leaders should be roped in to dissuade the misguided youth.

The hoax of living in heaven after martyrdom needs to be exposed; at the same time it must be stressed how such actions bring tremendous pain to the families of the jihadi youths. This is not the job of the state. Society needs to be involved.