The 20-year-old Pune woman who was almost labelled a “suicide bomber” by security agencies and arrested in Kashmir ahead of the Republic Day celebrations, had travelled to the Valley a month ago to meet a person she wanted to marry.
“She was with the man [she wanted to marry] when she was detained. She had no explosives on her. We are in a fix as no terror charge is made as of now,” a security official said.
The woman, still in the custody of the J&K police, has been detained by the police in Pune, Jammu and Delhi over the past two years.
Officials say she is “self-radicalised” and because of her extreme views, she was detained and counselled by the Maharashtra police in December 2015.
Sparks panic
She reached Srinagar with her mother in the first week of January.
Security agencies went into a tizzy when they received a message from their counterparts in Maharashtra that the woman had travelled to the Kashmir Valley.
The secret message ( The Hindu has a copy of the text) that was flashed by the office of the Inspector-General of Police, J&K, on January 23 said, “There is a strong input that one [name withheld] resident of Pune, Maharashtra, who is presently in Valley may cause suicide explosion near or inside Republic Day parade venue in Kashmir Valley.”
A source in the security establishment said the woman had come in contact with a resident of the border town of Uri on Facebook and wanted to marry him.
“She told her mother that she was going to Kashmir. She said either she would settle down there or become a shahid (martyr), but would never come back. Her mother, fearing for the safety of her daughter, accompanied her to Srinagar,” the official said.
Mother returns
However, a few days after reaching Srinagar, when they were in an autorickshaw in Budgam, the woman jumped from the vehicle. Unable to trace her, her mother went to Banihal and took a train back to Pune.
On January 26, Additional Police Commissioner, Anti-Terrorism Squad, Ravindra Kadam told The Hindu , “We received inputs that the girl, who hails from Pune, was in Jammu and Kashmir and supposedly planning to execute a terror act in Kashmir on Republic Day. While we could not locate her in Pune, her parents claimed that she was at the place where she had been sent for her studies. They were anxious about not revealing her location as they felt it could attract adverse publicity.”
The police said that in 2015, the woman, who was a student at a Pune convent, was planning to leave the country to join the Islamic State. She was later detained by the ATS after it tracked an alleged conversation between her and a recruiter. The girl allegedly came under the thrall of the terror group through social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. According to the ATS, her handler had managed to convince the woman to come to Syria. The person also reportedly promised to provide her with medical education there.
(With Shoumojit Banerjee)
