Lone Actors Drive India's Terror Threat as Modules Go Unstructured

Terror modules would also increasingly have buddy pairs so that scrutiny is very less, an official said.

While the ISI has ensured a massive propaganda push within India, terror outfits such as the Islamic State have flooded the Internet with radical content.

The ISI does realise that it cannot afford to be blamed for a terror attack on Indian soil as it is aware that India can undertake another 'Operation Sindoor'.

The Islamic State on the other hand wants to infiltrate the minds of the youth and ensure that they are radicalised to such an extent that they would carry out attacks on their own.

An Intelligence Bureau official says that these strategies being adopted by the ISI and Islamic State would only lead to an increase in the number of lone actors carrying out attacks.

The Islamic State is not bothered about the scale of the attack. It could be one death or two, but the impact that such an attack makes is immense. One may be walking around doing his business and an Islamic State killer may just be around him, the official said. This is the psychological impact that an Islamic State styled attack has.

The ISI on the other hand has other plans. It wants self-funded and motivated modules to come up on their own. It wants all the modules to be home-grown in nature.

However, it wants the modules to have a smaller number of people and expects that they should not have any conversation with anyone from Pakistan in the run-up to the attack.

It expects that even the funding trail should be within India and nothing should lead to Pakistan.

Another official says that the ISI-styled modules are relatively easier to deal with as the members of such modules are bound to leave some trail or the other.

The worry is what the Islamic State has been doing. After successfully penetrating states like Kerala and Tamil Nadu, it has been focussing on the rest of India. The official said that the penetration is so deep that it has become difficult for the agencies to identify individuals who could carry out a lone actor strike.

There has been a surge in such cases in recent months. Zaib Zubair Ansari in Mumbai, Rizwan in Delhi and Tushar Chauhan alias Hizbullah Khan in Uttar Pradesh. This is a clear indication that the radical material and Do-It-Yourself (DIY) material that is being shared has gone up a lot.

The official went on to explain that this has been a global trend and the agencies across the world are finding it hard to track such persons.

The problem is that there is a zero communication trail and this is what has been the nightmare for the security agencies. The lack of a financial trail is also another issue when it comes to such persons and the attacks that they carry out.

The agencies have been appealing to relatives and parents to keep a close watch on the behaviour of seemingly radicalised persons. If they find something unusual they ought to report it. It has worked in some cases that were reported in South India.

However, now such individuals have become smart and act quite normally even though they are fully radicalised.

In the Mumbai case, Ansari was staying alone and none of his relatives were aware of what he was up to. Even in the case of Hizbullah Ali Khan, the parents were unaware that he had been converted and radicalised. They said that he was suffering from a neurological disorder.

Even in cases that have been reported from abroad, the people familiar with the lone actor have maintained that the person looked normal and showed no signs of being radicalised.

An official said that this would be a major challenge going ahead. The agencies will have to shift from traditional network interception to proactive, community-based and digital monitoring.

Monitoring behaviour, digital Intelligence, strengthening protective services and community awareness would be the key.

It is also equally important to take down DIY manuals and radical content on a daily basis, the official said.

The challenge is immense and India will have to brace and deal with such attempts by Islamic State inspired lone actors, the official also added.

- IANS