Red Fort Terror | Return of educated radicals

From software engineers to doctors, radicalisation is not confined to the socioeconomically deprived

‘Eye for an eye: The dust will never settle down’, read the subject of 13-page email that landed at various media houses after the September 2008, Delhi serial blasts, claiming responsibility of the capital carnage with these words: ‘To dreadfully terrorise you this time, by the Will and Help of Almighty Allah, we are about to devastate your very first metropolitan centre, your most strategic hindutva hub, your green zone — yes! It's your own capital’.

By describing Delhi as India’s green zone, the email writer equated it with the highly protected area, called ‘green zone’ too, in Baghdad, from where the United States’ officials ran Iraq after ousting Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Mansoor Asghar Peerbhoy, the Indian Mujahideen operative who allegedly sent such emails, was arrested by the Mumbai Police a month after the Delhi blasts. Peerbhoy was employed with Yahoo, fetching a salary of Rs 19 lakh per annum. Many of his associates, too, were techies. Announcing the arrest of Peerbhoy and his 10 associates, then Mumbai Police crime branch head Rakesh Maria said all the accused were highly-qualified and computer-savvy, and came from good and educated families. He made it a point to add that their families did not know about their activities.

Educated radicals

The Indian jihadi landscape is littered with highly-educated boys and girls getting radicalised, mostly due to online propaganda unleashed by recruiters and perpetrators of terror.

In 2016, when the Indian security establishment detected the fleeing of a group of 21 men and women to ISIS-controlled Afghanistan, it didn’t come as a surprise that most of them were educated, and belonged to upper-middle-class families.

In October, the Maharashtra Anti-Terror Squad arrested a software engineer in Pune on the charges of being linked to al Qaeda. The police said the accused, Zubair Hangargekar, was well-educated, and specialised in software testing and database development. He used to work at a software IT company, where he earned a good salary.

Hence, the detection of a group of doctors from Kashmir who had amassed around 3,000 kg of ammonium nitrate with two assault rifles, and other bomb-making ingredients in Faridabad, shortly before the blast in a car at Red Fort on November 10, is not a new phenomenon, but a continuation of a pattern — the radicalisation of educated youth.

A misnomer

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) says ‘the term ‘white-collar crime’ was reportedly coined in 1939 and generally non-violent in nature’. But the most important component of terrorism is violence. Therefore, it's a bit of a misnomer to call this ‘white collar’ (just because of the background of people involved in it) terrorism, because violence is an intrinsic part of it.

The challenges it brings before the law enforcement agencies are not unique — good fieldwork where every clue, however small or insignificant, is followed up with a mix of human and technical intelligence can help in detecting such networks, as it happened in the case of the Faridabad module.

The appearance of Jaish-e-Mohammed posters in Nowgam, in Srinagar, threatening attacks on security forces, followed up diligently by local police it led to the arrest of a few overground workers, who finally indicated the involvement of a cleric Moulvi Irfan, whose interrogation revealed a pan-India JeM module.

Pre-emption is better than detection

In case of radicalisation, however, pre-emption is more important than detection.

The Indian security establishment has followed the path of de-radicalisation by putting emphasis on community outreach and counselling, rather than arrest in cases of youth who were caught while fleeing to Syria to join the ISIS.

In many cases, the youth apprehended at airports were released to their families on the condition that they would ensure their ward didn’t repeat it. In a few cases, some of those who were handed over to the families tried to run away again, yet they were not arrested; the families and community elders were asked to counsel them. In some cases, the anti-terror squads helped in providing counselling sessions for radicalised boys and girls, some of them as young as 16 years old.

These are more efforts from the State’s side have helped contain ISIS’ influence over young impressionable minds across the country. The Faridabad shocker and Red Fort blasts show that the authorities must do more to check the radicalisation of young minds.

Rajesh Ahuja is an independent journalist who writes on national security and investigation agencies. X: @iamrajeshahuja.

(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH)