New Delhi: Pakistan intelligence operatives are using the social media profiles of spiritual gurus and babas to trap Indian Army personnel for eliciting sensitive military information, said a dossier issued by the Indian Army in mid-October.
“Pakistani spies are posing as spiritual gurus or babas on social media websites like YouTube and are targeting service personnel and their family members. Pakistan intelligence operatives are trying to gain the trust of the army personnel and their family members to extract sensitive military information from them through Skype or Whatsapp,” said the dossier.
The Indian army has identified around 150 social media profiles of Pakistani spies, which are being used to trap its men.
The dossier also warned Indian army men about attempts to honey-trap them by the Pakistan spies through fake female profiles on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
On Wednesday, the Rajasthan Police arrested two Indian army personnel — Lance Naik Ravi Verma and Sepoy Vichitra Behera — for sending sensitive information to Pakistan.
Both of them were honey-trapped by Pakistani spies posing as women on Facebook with the name of ‘Seerat’, said sources.
The dossier said that the Pakistani spies could also call jawans or their family members posing as army officers, mission commanders, journalists, nurses from military service, welfare officers and insurance agents.
“They can call posing as Commander Vikram from Army Headquarters or Major A.K. Singh to jawans or unsuspecting officers try to get contact number of senior army commanders, troops movement, troops position and outcome of war games,” said the sources.
The dossier even talks about the Pakistani spies calling unsuspecting Indian railway clerks to know about the troop movement. “The Pakistani spies can also try to contact men saying that they have won lottery and then deposit money in their bank accounts. Thereafter they can blackmail them to give information,” said sources.
The Army has asked its personnel not to post pictures in uniform on social media and avoid accepting friend requests from unknown people on Facebook. It has advised its men to change the privacy settings on Facebook and other apps to “only friends” so that unknown people are not able to check their profile and pictures.
It also asked them to avoid visiting suspicious websites or taking calls from or chatting with unidentified people.
