Chakravyuh: These ISIS recruits didn't know who they were speaking to

Bengaluru, Jan 14: To all those youth, who are interested in joining the ISIS/Al-Qaeda, it is better you change your plans. You don't know who you were speaking to all these days.

There are several persons who had hoped to leave India and join the ISIS. The number of those, who have expressed their desire to join the ISIS, currently is at 140. The Indian agencies are confident that they will be nabbed just before they make their move.

Chakravyuh:

Operation Chakravyuh or Operation Maze was launched sometime back in which officers of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) created accounts posing to be ISIS recruiters.

They were immediately contacted by scores of youth who had expressed their desire to join the ISIS. The officials under fake handles through which they conversed with possible recruits.

Those expressing their desire to join these terror outfits were given information on how to join the outfit and in the bargain what the agencies did was gather data and information on these persons right from their identity to address.

All on watch list:

The IB said that they have managed to get details of all persons who have shown interest in joining the ISIS. "We cannot book cases against them since an offence has not been committed as yet," one official said.

"It would be stupid to direct booking of cases against them. Instead what we have done is form a team which keeps a 24/7 vigil on these persons. Any move made by them is monitored and if they try to move out of the country we are confident that they will be nabbed," he added.

Confident that the craze will drop:

One IB officer said, "We are confident that this craze of people wanting to join the ISIS will drop drastically in the coming months. Thanks to this operation we have left them confused and they will wonder who they are talking to.

There are several persons online who are actual recruiters. However now that the message has gone that the agencies are watching them, that confusion will prevent them from going online and checking for joining details.

We have successfully managed to bring down the number of recruits in the past couple of months. In September there were 3000 of them who were willing to sign up for a jihadi journey. However today the number is down to 140 and all are monitored."

Operation will continue:

A special desk of the IB will continue this operation. In fact the agencies are enhancing their online skills and in the months to come will add more persons to this desk.

The idea is to create as many handles as possible and monitor Indian youth at all time. Take the Bengaluru Church Street blast case. The person, who had posted the message claiming responsibility for the attack, turned out to be a hoax.

He was posting messages on a fake account. An officer with the Bengaluru police created a handle under the name Basha Khan and spoke with this person. He gave out all his details and had even fixed a meeting. He ended up giving his details and was finally nabbed.

OneIndia News