New Delhi:
Pakistan’s spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), is now trying to use mainstream politics as camouflage for terror. The ISI has directed its overground workers (OGW’s) in Jammu and Kashmir to infiltrate national political parties to mask terror recruitment, fundraising and weapons movement.
The strategy is calculated: embed operatives within political structures to evade counter-terror surveillance and run terror networks under the veneer of democratic activity.
This sinister plan was exposed during the recent interrogation of OGWs picked up by the Jammu and Kashmir Police. Investigators found basic membership cards of national parties in their pockets.
Former DGP S P Vaid warned that this nefarious plot, to some extent, will shield OGWS from scrutiny by security forces. “The membership card becomes a shield during searches,” he said. “We have had cases where OGWs exploited party membership to transport arms,” he added.
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This playbook isn’t new. In the late 1990s and 2000s, there had been several cases where OGWs had used party membership cards to deceive security agencies.
In July 2020, villagers in Reasi caught Talib Hussein, a wanted Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist.
He was found to be an active member of the BJP and the party’s Minority Morcha social media in-charge in Jammu. Two AK rifles, several grenades and other arms and ammunition were recovered from their possession. He used his membership to click pictures with top leadership of the party, and this helped him get access to several places, till he was caught.
In the past, terrorists relied on voter cards and fake Aadhaar documents to evade police. The recent bust of a Lashkar module in Malerkotla, Punjab, showed how Pakistani terrorists operated in India for over 15 years, largely undetected by security agencies.
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Recent counter-terror operations have dealt a blow to outfits operating in Kashmir. Many groups are now leaderless after their top commanders were eliminated. The OGW network has also been smashed to dismantle the terror ecosystem. The ISI believes that in this vacuum, pushing OGWs into mainstream political parties will give them cover and access to key locations – allowing them to provide logistics to terror commanders without detection.
Central agencies are now mapping these reactivated OGW cells. Operations are underway to break their logistics lines and blunt online radicalisation before it takes root. The fear: one breach could undo years of fragile calm.
