JOIN USCentre plans to wean youth away from radicals
The government is working on a two-pronged strategy to wean away youth from getting exploited by radicals and fundamentalists, said Intelligence Bureau (IB) director Nehchal Sandhu on Thursday.
He was addressing a two-day conference of police chiefs of all the states, organised by the IB.
Sandhu said it was clear from the terror module smashed by the Bangalore police that youth are vulnerable to such elements. To buck the trend, it was necessary to “counter-radicalise” and “de-radicalise” youth, he added.
The IB chief drew the attention of the security managers at the Centre and state levels of the need for a comprehensive pre-emptive strategy to redress the grievances of youth.
Sources said the strategy would focus on development and education, as well as instilling confidence in them to overcome any feelings of persecution.
The plan, which is at a nascent stage, will take shape in a month and will then be circulated among other stakeholders for action, added the sources.
The other key topic Sandhu focussed on was use of social media to create unrest in the country in the wake of violence in Assam.
Union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde shared the IB director’s concern, acknowledging that cyber world was being used by terrorists for posting “motivated rumours” which posed a new challenge to the security forces.
“There is increasing evidence of terrorists using cyber space. The recent incidents in Bangalore in Karnataka, Pune in Maharashtra and other states of India where motivated rumours and irresponsible use of the social networking media posted a new challenge...Police will have to develop skills in this area not just for locating malicious content but also for identifying those responsible for posting it,” Shinde remarked.
He also said that Maoism continues to pose significant challenge.
“There are indications about increase in the number of trained and armed cadres, reorganization of military potential for formation of new battalions, and creation of well developed indigenous capacity to their arsenal,” he stated.
Shinde cautioned chiefs of states police and paramilitary forces against leaking information to media before investigation into cases are complete.
This comes a few days after the Karnataka government and the police were found virtually running a daily bulletin on the probe developments into the arrests of 12 terror suspects. “Premature exposure of such intelligence can retard and even defeat the possibility of interdiction. Similarly, revealing of clues as collected by painstaking investigations to the print and electronic media alerts other conspirators and blunts the momentum of investigations,” Shinde remarked.
He said that even the novel techniques evolved by investigators are eroded by the “indiscriminate disclosure of specifics in the public domain”.
The IB view
* Youth are vulnerable to radicals and fundamentalists. It is necessary to “de-radicalise” them.
* The cyberworld is increasingly used to post rumours.
* The strategy will focus on development, education and instilling confidence in youth to overcome feelings of persecution.