J-K cops crack ‘anti-national’ network

The Cyber Crime Cell of Jammu and Kashmir Police claimed to have uncovered a network of youths who used social networking sites to foment trouble in the state during the last few years.

"We have identified the persons who have been indulging in trouble mongering over the past couple of years by using the social networking sites," Inspector General of Police (Kashmir Zone) S M Sahai said.

Some of the youths have already been questioned, but no arrest has been made so far in the case. Sahai, however, refused to give any further details of the investigations or the line of action to be adopted by the police, saying the law would take its own course.

Police sources said investigators had identified 24 persons who were operating over a dozen "anti-national pages".

Four youths, most of them in their early 20s and hailing from Srinagar city, have been questioned in this regard till now. They were operating pages like 'Freedom of Dawn', 'Balai Khuda', 'Aalov' and 'We love Syed Ali Shah Geelani' on Facebook, which allegedly supported separatist agenda and stone-pelting incidents during the summer unrest of 2010.

In fact, these pages had become reliable sources of information about incidents during the five months of unrest that year as Internet users from various parts of the Valley posted latest events on these pages, they claimed.

Anti-national pages being operated from abroad, including in UK, US, Pakistan and the UAE, have been tracked down.

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