Centre unveils ‘Prahaar’, India’s first comprehensive counter-terrorism policy

New Delhi, Feb 24: The government unveiled the country’s first counter-terrorism policy, “Prahaar”, setting out a multi-layered strategy based on “zero tolerance”, intelligence-led prevention and disruption of extremist violence that aims to deny terrorists, their financiers and supporters access to funds, weapons and safe havens.

The policy unveiled by the Home Ministry on Monday is based on seven key pillars to counter the terror threats emanating from India or abroad — prevention, responses, aggregating internal capacities, human rights and “Rule of Law”-based processes, attenuating the conditions enabling terrorism including radicalisation, aligning and shaping the international efforts to counter terrorism and recovery and resilience through a whole-of-society approach.

“There has been a history of sporadic instability in the immediate neighbourhood of India, which has often given rise to ungoverned spaces. Besides, a few countries in the region have sometimes used terrorism as an instrument of State policy,” the document said, without naming Pakistan.

“Notwithstanding this, India does not link terrorism to any specific religion, ethnicity, nationality or civilisation. India has always denounced terrorism and its use by any actor for achieving any stated or unstated ends unambiguously and unequivocally,” it added.

Stating that India has consistently stood by the victims of terrorism and has been steadfast in its belief that there can be no justification whatsoever for violence in the world, the document said it is this principled approach that informs New Delhi’s policy of “zero tolerance” against terrorism.

“India has long been affected by sponsored terrorism from across the border, with Jihadi terror outfits as well as their frontal organisations continuing to plan, coordinate, facilitate and execute terror attacks in India. India has been on the target of global terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which have been trying to incite violence in the country through sleeper cells,” it said.

Operating from foreign soil, terrorists have hatched conspiracies to promote violence in India, with handlers using the latest technologies, including drones, to facilitate terror-related activities and attacks in Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir, the policy said.

“Increasingly, terrorist groups are engaging organised criminal networks for logistics and recruitment to execute and facilitate terror strikes in India. For propaganda, communication, funding and guiding terror attacks, these terror groups use social media platforms as well as ‘instant messaging applications’,” it added.

PTI