Hyderabad Police keep hawk's eye on ISIS suspects, but are they well equipped?

The arrest of 32-year-old Salman Moinuddin, who did his MS at Houston in US, late on Thursday night exposed Hyderabad’s vulnerability to terror activities once again. The police and the security agencies of the country, who are constantly keeping a tab on online and offline behaviour of several suspects are worried about techies getting attracted to terror activities. That the techie’s father Ahmed Moinuddin, a retired civil engineer, claimed that his son was innocent and falsely implicated in the case is a different story. [caption id=“attachment_2052211” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational image. AFP[/caption] The tracking mechanism of the Counter Intelligence department of Telangana police seems inadequate when it comes to intercepting the online communication. A senior IPS officer, on the condition of anonymity, told Firstpost that there were less than half a dozen staffers working with the CI cell (counter-intelligence cell) for online surveillance. Four of them are well trained, but barely sufficient to handle the stuff transpiring between millions of people. Apart from the most popular social networks, there are hundreds of other sites that open up one-on-one or one-to-many communication channels, because of which the vulnerability has attained ominous proportions. The Government of India too had blocked 32 websites, including video platforms like Vimeo and DailyMotion, because of “serious national security concerns”, following a complaint from Maharashtra’s Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) in a court of law in November last. The government contended that the sites carried inflammatory “anti-India content” from terror groups like the ISIS. This created furore among the netizens in the country. However, the government subsequently lifted the ban and unblocked the sites, as the websites have come forth to remove the objectionable content. Interestingly, the blocking was not announced officially, while the unblocking was publicised by Gulshan Rai, Director-General of CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team). The Director-General of Police of Telangana Anurag Sharma told Firstpost that the police were proactive in arresting the terror suspects. “We are preventing disasters, before they are executed,” he said. Sharma went on to add that the volume of data and information on the internet was phenomenal. To a query on how equipped the department was to deal with this, he said: “I don’t think any number of staff will be able to deal with this. Apart from monitoring the content, we have other methods and sources to gather information about suspects. We know there is a lot to be done. In collaboration with agencies, websites and all concerned, we make a concerted effort to prevent such activities.” Sharma said that the police were aware of privacy issues and therefore would not snoop around on online content of social media. “We basically try to monitor the content of only suspects. It is impossible to monitor every content. Every day, something new comes up. It is just that we need to keep working, for growth of internet cannot be curbed,” This is going to be the trend. People are getting educated. Technology, once available, would be used. And, there was no way anybody could control it, asserted the DGP. The police on Thursday night arrested Salman Moinuddin, a resident of Bazaar ghat area in Hyderabad, from Rajiv Gandhi International Airport when he was trying to board a Dubai-bound flight. The police said that he was planning to go to Syria via Dubai where he would be joined by his girlfriend. Assistant Commissioner of Police Sudarshan said that the police would seek his custody for questioning to corroborate the evidence they had already collected. The Counter-Intelligence Department collected the information by tracking the online activities of Moinuddin, following the leads provided by central intelligence agencies. As the US denied extension of his visa, he returned to Hyderabad in October and decided to go to Dubai. The police said that Moinuddin was to meet his girlfriend Nicky Joseph alias Nicole — a British National, who eventually rechristened herself Ayesha after converting into Islam — at Dubai to go to Syria via Turkey. Moinuddin did his MS in Electronics from Texas Southern University, Houston. He was drawn to the ISIS ideology while doing odd jobs there. He and his girlfriend created Facebook groups with fictitious identities and lured several followers. Nicky Jospeh had numerous compatriots among the ISIS groups, the police felt. Cyberabad Police, who arrested Moinuddin, said in a release that over 180 messages were posted in one of three Facebook accounts created him and Ayesha. This was the route they chose to lure jihadists into their activity. The police questioned Moinuddin on Friday in which he reportedly confessed that he wanted to marry Ayesha in Dubai and then move to Syria to fight on behalf of ISIS for the cause of establishing the caliphate. Interestingly, some reports suggested that Salman Moinuddin was married and has two children and his family lives in Bazaar ghat area. The police would further question him once the court grants his custody to them. Moinuddin’s father, however, scoffed off the police contention that his son was indulging in terror activities. “I am sure he would never do anything like that. He has not done anything illegal. He must have had some information and material about some organisations,” he said. The police had arrested one Khalid Ahmed, a Burmese national, on 18 November, 2014 from Burma Colony in Hyderabad on similar charges and an ex-Google engineer Munawad Salman, in October. At least 11 young engineering dropouts from Hyderabad were intercepted in Kolkata when they were trying to crossover to Dhaka in Bangladesh. They were questioned, counseled and sent back. However, the police are continuing to keep a hawk’s eye on most of the suspects.