New Delhi: It was in August last year, soon after the scrapping of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir, that Tania Parveen, a final-year student at the Maulana Azad College in Kolkata, came under the radar of Indian intelligence agencies for allegedly being in touch with members of Pakistan-based terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).
According to sources, Parveen was allegedly helping send “material” between Pakistan and Kashmir amid a curfew and internet blockade in the Valley, apart from helping the terror outfit recruit youngsters from West Bengal.
Sources claimed that Parveen was a part of over 20 WhatsApp groups active in Iran, Iraq, Tunisia using Pakistani numbers, which were sent to her by her handlers there.
She was first tracked by the Intelligence Bureau before the Military Intelligence got involved too, when they found out that Parveen was being allegedly used to honey trap Army soldiers on social media, including Facebook and WhatsApp, sources told ThePrint.
She was finally arrested by the West Bengal Special Task Force (STF) on 20 March from her residence in Basirhat in North 24 Parganas, and has been booked under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).
In April, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) took over the case and were given custody Saturday to question her on the LeT’s network in India.
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Mother and brother are social workers
Parveen was born and brought up in Basirhat where she went to a co-education Bengali medium school.
While her mother is an ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activist) worker, her brother is a male health worker (MHW) and her father is a daily wage labourer.
“She has studied in a reputed school in Bengal. In this school, in fact, Muslims were in a minority … It was in class 10 that she was inspired to read Islamic literature by her maternal uncle,” an intelligence source said.
“It is then when she started wearing a hijab to school. In fact, her mother and brother are not religious and do not believe in the burqa or a hijab. They are engaged in a lot of social work … but after she (Parveen) read up a lot on Islam, she turned religious,” the source added.
Mini-recruitment operation
According to a second source, Parveen signed up on various groups online over her growing interest in Islam, which was when she was “approached” by operatives in Pakistan.
“She spent a lot of time listening to speeches, interacting with people online and that is when she was approached by operatives from Pakistan,” the second source said.
The source added that it is highly unlikely for the LeT to engage women in its operations, but since Parveen seemed “ambitious”, she was picked.
“We can say that she was tasked with running a recruitment cell of sorts … to engage more youngsters and put them in touch with operatives,” the source said. “In fact, she was in touch with a few youngsters and managed to make them a part of her WhatsApp groups,” he added.
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‘Was reluctant to remove hijab, could not lure soldiers’
Sources said that another primary task for Parveen was allegedly honey trapping Army soldiers and getting sensitive information out of them.
To that end, Parveen had allegedly made five to six Facebook profiles with Hindu names and was in touch with soldiers, the second source said. This is when the Military Intelligence came into the picture.
The source, however, said it is unclear if she managed to honey trap any of them. According to the source, when she was questioned about it, she said that she could not “lure any officer as she was reluctant to remove her hijab”.
“She said she felt uncomfortable removing her hijab to lure a soldier. So, she used to abort the conversation whenever the soldier asked her to meet him,” he added.
“She also revealed that at many times, her handlers in Pakistan used to send her details of a person, from whom they needed specific information and many of them were personnel from the Indian Army,” he further said.
Network of SIM cards, WhatsApp groups
According to the second source, Parveen was running several WhatsApp groups and was a part of many others, using Pakistani phone numbers.
Following her arrest, the West Bengal STF recovered many handsets and SIM cards from her possession.
“She got phone numbers from her handlers in Pakistan, using which she created many WhatsApp groups … In fact, she was a part of many groups from the Middle East, including Iran, Iraq and Africa, where they discussed how to encourage Jihad,” the source said.
Love for Kashmir
Although Parveen had never been to the Valley, she had a “strange connection with its people”, a third source told ThePrint.
Parveen was also in direct touch with two men in the Valley, with whom she often exchanged reading material and also passed on messages sent to her by her Pakistani handlers, the source said.
She had learnt Kashmiri and could speak the language fluently.
“She is a masters in Arabic, knows Bengali, speaks in fluent Hindi and also Kashmiri. She is very well read and speaks well,” the source said.
Parveen allegedly told the West Bengal STF that she had a “fascination and strange love for Kashmir”.
“She said that she was fascinated by Kashmir and always wanted to travel there but could not due to the situation there. She also spoke of the sufferings of the people in the Valley following the abrogation of Article 370 and stories of Army atrocities,” the source said.
“She claimed that stories of Kashmiri men and women pained her and encouraged her to take up this fight … She is highly radicalised,” he added.
The NIA has now taken Parveen into custody and will be questioning her on her network in India and Pakistan.
Although she does not have any travel history to either Pakistan or anywhere outside India, investigators have found that she has allegedly been working for LeT for the past two-and-a-half years.
“She always laid low. It is possible that in these years, she helped LeT recruit youths from India and even sent them abroad for training,” a NIA source said.
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