ISI planning ‘virtual war’ against India: Intel report

Mukesh Ranjan

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, June 11

Intelligence agencies, in a report to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), have alerted about a nefarious design of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), which has created a new terror brigade to wage a “virtual war” against India.

Sources, while confirming that a report has been forwarded to the ministry for “appropriate action”, said the ISI had named the brigade as “Defenders of Pakistan”, which had been assigned the task of carrying out its operations “in the virtual mode by creating social media handles and hashtags”.

“Thousands of handles and hashtags are being created to fuel anti-India sentiments. The ISI is in the process of hiring around 550 tech-savvy persons, who also know how to handle and manage social media platforms,” said a top Intelligence Bureau (IB) official. The official said, “We have reported to the ministry that they have put in place a plan to distribute such hired persons in a dozen odd teams and assign them the task to radicalise Indian youth and draw them towards terrorism in a number of ways.”

The IB officials said the report also mentioned a recent meeting held by the ISI in Rawalpindi, where the plan was chalked out to allot the tasks of waging “1,000 fights” with India by exploiting the cyberspace to further this agenda.

As part of this design, ISI teams have begun their activities, as recently they widely circulated fake videos of police beating Muslim youths in mosques. Security experts are of the view that the ISI has devised the online mode to foment trouble in India.