The Srinagar police has questioned 16 Kashmiri youth and has summoned 24 others after they were found spearheading anti-India and anti-security forces campaign on the social networking site Facebook. Their postings were also allegedly aimed at whipping up street protests in the Kashmir Valley which had witnessed widespread disturbances and unrest during three consequent summers beginning in 2008 leaving dozens slain and hundreds wounded and properties devastated.
All the 24 administrators of these Facebook pages are learnt to be college and university students in their late teens or early twenties and, the police claims, had played a major role in fomenting trouble in Srinagar and other Valley towns during the summer 2010 unrest. The police officials have warned them of legal action if they persist with their anti India tirade on the social networking sites.
Some of those already questioned, for what the police insists tantamount cyber crime, have been identified as Irfan Tramboo, Muheet, Salik and Faraaz, all residents of Srinagar. The police claims they have confessed their “crime” during the questioning by the officials of its special cyber crime detection cell. The pages they would run on Facebook were titled “Freedom of Dawn”, “Allaw” (bonfire), “Hoshiar Jamaat” (Alert group), “Ballaiy Khuda” (God’s rage) and “We love Syed Ali Shah Geelani”.
The police sources here said that the investigating officials seized their laptops and desktops and software as evidence of their involvement. It is learnt that they were hunted down through their IP addresses and other electronic evidence. The police has also summoned the parents of some of these youth and asked them to ensure their stayed away from this pastime in future to avoid action under law.
A special police investigating team which laid hands on these youth has reported to senior officials that the accused would besides posting anti-India, anti-government and anti-police slogans and comments on Facebook and other social networking sites upload “provocative and seditious material” and in order to hide their identity use pseudonyms to administer these pages.
During the investigations, the police has also found that similar pages on Facebook are being run from Pakistan and European countries either by Kashmiri expatriates or their foreign sympathisers. They include a Switzerland-based Chris-tian woman who visited Srinagar in 2011 and met some of these youth to coordinate the activities of these pages. The police has registered two cases against her and others under section 66 IT Act and 13 Unlawful activities (Prevention) Act.