Officials raise concern about 'honey trapping' by terror groups to lure in youths

'Honey trapping' is one of the new methods used by Pakistan-based terror groups to woo youths towards militancy and use them as human carriers for delivering arms from one place to another or acting as guides to infiltrating terrorists, officials said.

An intelligence-based operation had led to the arrest of Syed Shazia, a woman in her early 30s from Bandipore, a fortnight ago. It was seen that she had many accounts on social networking sites such as Facebook and Instagram which many youths in the Valley followed, they said.

Officials from the central security agencies had been keeping a watch on the Internet Protocol (IP) address used by Shazia for several months. She used to converse with youths and would promise to meet them only if a certain "consignment" was delivered from one place to another, the officials said.

Shazia had been in touch with some officials in the police department as well, but the officials termed it a usual tactic of "double-cross" as she used to report the movement of troops and "not so sensitive" information to her handlers across the border.

During interrogation, she told the investigators about the presence of some more women in militants ranks who had been tasked with luring youths into militancy, they said.

A week before her arrest on November 17, the Jammu and Kashmir Police had arrested Aysia Jan (28) for carrying 20 grenades in Lawaypora on the city outskirts, after receiving inputs about militants trying to smuggle arms and ammunition into the city.

Besides grenades, the police had also seized ammunition from her possession, they said.

Her monitoring had started during the probe of a case from September last year when the police killed Abu Ismail, the Lashker-e-Taiba terror chief in the valley, and Chotta Qassim. Both were involved in last year's gunning down of Amarnath pilgrims in which eight people were killed.

Some documents and materials were seized from the encounter site in the outskirts of Srinagar city which indicated that an unidentified woman hailing from North Kashmir was involved in supplying arms and ammunition to the two terrorists.

It was in April this year, the woman was identified as Syed Shazia. Continuous monitoring of her social media presence showed that she was getting diktats from across the border for honey trapping and luring youths into militancy from across the border, they said.

She was in constant touch with Sherwan alias Ali of Jaish-e-Mohammed terror outfit who introduced her to Pakistan-based terrorists Sufiyan and Qasim Khan Gauri.

Later, she started working as an overground worker from Jaish terror group and was acting as the main conduit for ensuring delivery of weapons to other parts of the valley.

Before her arrest, a special police officer hailing from Handwara was picked up by police for informing Shazia that her phone had been kept on monitoring.

It was found that the special police officer identified as Irfan had been passing information to Shaiza, they said.

She was arrested under various sections of Ranbir Penal Code (the equivalent of IPC) and Arms Act.

(With inputs from agencies.)