India Faces A New Challenge: Jihadist Radicalization

Authored by Vinay Kaura via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
Jihadist terrorism in India is on the verge of acquiring a global footprint, as radicalization and recruitment have become more sophisticated thanks to social media and the Internet. This marks a clear departure from the past when jihadist terrorism was almost synonymous with the insurgency in Kashmir.
It was often held that ideologically motivated Islamist terror had bypassed mainland India and that even though there had been a separatist insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir state, Muslims in the rest of the country had spurned the radical revivalist movements plaguing other Islamic countries. This is no longer the case, as a growing number of Muslims from mainland India are becoming radicalized.
Last week, in a joint anti-terror operation by the police teams of five states, an allegedly ISIS-inspired terror module spanning Maharashtra, Punjab, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh was busted with the arrest of three suspected terrorists.
The police had received intelligence that some known terror suspects in Uttar Pradesh had become active and were trying to recruit new members to launch a major terror attack in the country. Initial investigations into the Bhopal-Ujjain passenger train blast in March convinced the security agencies that it was first major ISIS operation in India.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Apr 26, 2017.