How Indian Army is fighting back the outbreak of Pakistani catfishing

New Delhi, Jan 17: With incident of honey-trapping of Indian soldiers on the rise, the Intelligence Bureau has issued an advisory warning of more such attempts by Pakistan. With the social media becoming a boon for agencies such as the ISI to lay traps on Indian soldiers, a list of dos and dont's too would issued in due course of time.

An officer tells OneIndia that some are gullible and hence are easily trapped. It could be due to several factors and a primary one among them is loneliness. In some of the recent incidents, the traps have been laid very easily. Some of the agents have used names of actors from the Hindi film industry to set traps.

General Bipin Rawat recently said, I tell my boys, do you think film stars want to become friends with you. But people still get trapped by these names. He also advised the soldiers, who have been trapped to come forward of face the consequences. He also said that if the soldiers do not come forward and it comes to our notice, the punishment meted out is heavy.

General Rawat also said that the scammers from across the border used Bollywood actresses' names to entice recruits into online relationships.

In 2015, the military regulations that were introduced barred servicemen from sharing any operational information online. However this has not had much effect and people continue to fall trap.

Intelligence Bureau officials say that banning the social media in sensitive areas would be a good option, but would be difficult to implement. Our soldiers work in tough conditions and sometimes use the social media as a recreational tool. However they must be very careful with whom they are chatting. More importantly they need to be careful about what they are chatting.

Once there is reciprocation, then the trap is laid. This is followed by blackmail and that is when the information is given out. It is hard to set guidelines in this regard and the soldiers must now learn from the numerous incidents. The Army on the other hand has raised the surveillance on the online activities of its soldiers. Further the Army has been viewing this very seriously and says that all steps would be taken to prevent the compromise of security.

Pakistan has a unit in Faridkot which is exclusively handling a module relating to cat fishing. It has set aside a huge budget of nearly Rs 3,500 crore for such operations. The intelligence agencies had said that apart from trying to elicit information, there is also a sustained attempt to embarrass the Indian establishment.