‘ISI using social media to trap men for spying’

LUCKNOW : Simple likes and comments on social media posts from unknown users could be an ISI trap for the armed forces personnel as well as common people.

Investigators of UP Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) discovered this alarming trend while interrogating BSF jawan Achyutanand Mishra, who was arrested from Noida on charges of spying on Wednesday.

He has been taken into five-day police custody remand since Wednesday evening. Mishra was honey-trapped by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) over social media and was being used to extract crucial information about BSF logistics and troop movement.

Inspector general (IG) of police of ATS Asim Arun said the BSF jawan was honey-trapped by an unknown Facebook user posing as a woman who simply liked his photograph.

The jawan got trapped into the net laid by the ISI and sent the friend request to the unknown user, he said. Sources, said the Facebook ID that was used to trap Mishra had as many as 90 Indians on its friend list.

Asim Arun admitted that multiple cases of ‘social media trap’ by ISI have been reported in the recent past in which people got trapped through simple likes and comments on their posts by unknown people, mainly girls. He said the ISI trap trend is not limited to the armed forces alone but some common men were also trapped in this manner for recce of important installations and collect crucial information.

Citing a case, the IG said the UP ATS had recently tracked one similar case where a 19-year-old youth from Alwar, Rajasthan was also trapped using the same trick and was interrogated around a week ago. “Similar to the BSF jawan case, the unknown social media user first became friend with the unemployed

youth posing as defence journalist of some reputed organisation and asked him to collect information about the armed force movement and logistics. The unknown social media user offered the youth to regularly work for him on salary of ₹4,000,” he stated.

He said the youth was let off as he had not shared any crucial information to the unknown social media user.

The IG said the ISI targets such people who are armed forces aspirants or stay somewhere close to important security and armed forces installations.

Another senior police official said some cases of honey trap were reported where the same trick was used to trap the armed forces aspirants. He said the unknown social media user continued friendship with the aspirants till they got inducted in different forces and then used them to extract crucial information.

He said a similar case was that of an armed force personnel.

He said the unknown social media user posed as a girl and promised him to marry after remaining in friendship with him for over two years.

He said the aspirant was badly in love with the girl whom he had never met and started sharing his training pictures and other details. The personnel was later tracked by the intelligence unit and was terminated from his services, he added.