21-year-old Bengal woman was part of 70 jihadi social media groups, says NIA charge sheet

Tania Parvin, 21, was arrested in March for being a Lashkar operative and trying to ‘honey trap’ Indian armed forces personnel online.

Representational image for the National Investigation Agency | Twitter

Kolkata: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) filed an 850-page charge sheet before a special NIA court in Kolkata Thursday against 21-year-old Tania Parvin, an alleged Lashkar-e-Taiba operative from West Bengal.

Parvin, a resident of Baduria in the North 24 Paraganas district and a student of Kolkata’s Maulana Azad College, was arrested by a special task force of the West Bengal Police in March, after they were tipped off by intelligence agencies. The case was later taken over by the NIA.

She was allegedly part of “70 jihadi groups on social media”, as well as some Palestinian and Syrian social media groups. The NIA says she was tasked by Pakistan’s intelligence agency ISI to ‘befriend’ members of Indian armed forces to extract strategic information.

Over 90 per cent of the charge sheet — around 780 pages — features chat transcripts and other messages allegedly exchanged between Parvin and her Pakistan-based LeT handlers, a source in the NIA told ThePrint. The charge sheet states that she was in constant touch with the handlers in Lahore, and was introduced to the ISI as a “local recruit”.

‘She is completely radicalised’

Shyamal Ghosh, the NIA’s counsel, told ThePrint that the agency has filed the charge sheet ahead of schedule because it’s a very important case.

“We will soon frame charges. Sections of UAPA have also been added against her. The transcripts of her messages sent to the LeT operatives reveal that it was not something casual. She is completely radicalised,” Ghosh said.

The NIA source quoted above added that Parvin was given the charge of running an online module, and recruiting young, “interested and dedicated” people through social media. The agency is still working on the online module.

Parvin comes from a locality that witnessed one of Bengal’s worst communal riots in July 2017. The riot was triggered by a social media post and went on for several days.

Sources in the police STF said these incidents affected Parvin, and she entered the social media groups of LeT last year through Facebook, saying she had a “strange love and connection for Kashmir”.

The NIA charge sheet adds that for ‘honey-trapping’ Indian armed forces personnel, she was asked to create multiple fake profiles on Facebook and Instagram. However, another NIA source said the agency was yet to find any evidence of her successfully ‘honey-trapping’ any such personnel yet, despite running over a dozen fake profiles on Facebook and Instagram.

Lawyer Ghosh added that for the initial hearings, Parvin’s family did not appoint a counsel for her, but finally did so Thursday.

“She was wilfully participating in jihadi activities on social media. Investigation is still on,” he said.