Amid tight border patrol, militant groups resort to recruit local J&K youths on massive scale

Security agencies are keeping a tab on the social media as the terror outfits use social networking sites to carry out the recruitment. There are 160 militants affiliated to different Pakistan based outfits are presently active in J&K.

New Delhi: With a tighter border patrol in place making it difficult for infiltrations, the militant groups active in the Kashmir Valley have turned to local populace for a massive recruitment drive to serve their insurgency agenda in J&K, according to a recent finding by the security agencies.

While the security agencies are believed to have learnt about the massive recruitment drive through the interrogations of recently apprehended militants, the spike in the local militant recruitment can be gauged from the fact that out of the 64 militants killed this year in J&K, only 18 were foreigners whereas the remaining 46 were local youths of J&K.

"As they are finding it difficult to push more militants into India to carry (out) subversive activities, the militant organizations have started a recruitment drive with the help of their (terror) sympathisers in J&K," a senior security official told ETV Bharat. "As many as 144 terrorists were also apprehended by the security forces since January," the official added.

"Along with different social media platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, the terror outfits extensively use telegram to avoid monitoring by the security agencies," added the official. The security agencies have also stepped up their social media media monitoring to tackle the challenge, the official said.

Quoting an intelligence report, the official said that around 160 militants affiliated to different Pakistan based outfits are presently active in J&K. According to the report, the official said that there are at least 83 militants working for Lashkar-e-Taiba, 30 for Jaish-e-Mohammed and 38 for Hizbul Mujahideen.

Amid border patrolling, the security agencies based in the valley have also been doing area dominations in different places across the union territory. On Wednesday, the Border Society Force (BSF) detected a tunnel along with a 265 feet oxygen pipe along the Samba border.