Revision summary
Options range from waiting for a blast, to a communal round-up, to a lawful mix of cyber disruption, targeted cases and livelihood outreach. The right bundle is evidence-led disruption plus jobs and counselling, briefed to the civilian government. The set-up needs range-level cyber skill, platform liaison, beat trust, force hygiene and a public line that the State will not hunt a community. Intelligence should map handlers and tasked youth with audit logs, lawful intercept and financial trails. A boy who liked a video is not the same file as a handler who sends a task.
Model answer
Introduction
Raman is a new Director General of Police. Unemployment in the State is high. A global terrorist brand is recruiting unemployed youth, with special focus on one community. The Cyber Cell finds many of those youth six to eight hours a day on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, endorsing handlers. This is security, livelihood, speech and fraternity on the same desk. A clumsy communal sweep will gift the recruiter a story. A sleepy DG will gift him a cohort.
Body
(a) Options available to Raman
First, he can treat it as ordinary crime statistics and wait for the first blast, which is omission. Second, he can order a mass communal round-up of the targeted community’s youth, which is fast, illegal in spirit, and excellent propaganda for the group. Third, he can shut the State’s internet for weeks, which punishes farmers and students and drives the traffic to darker apps. Fourth, he can build a lawful disruption package: cyber take-down and tracing with MHA/CERT and platforms, financial intelligence on handlers, targeted arrests where conspiracy is evidenced, and open political communication that unemployment is the State’s wound, not a community’s guilt. Fifth, he can pair police work with livelihood and counselling: employment fairs, campus and madrasa/youth-club outreach with credible community voices, exit ramps for the merely curious, and hard cases for the already tasked. Sixth, he can ask for a central force and sit back, which abdicates a DG’s role morality. The serious bundle is fourth plus fifth, sequenced, recorded, and briefed to the Chief Secretary and the elected government without becoming a partisan tool.
(b) Strengthening the set-up against penetration
People. Specialised cyber and OSINT cells in every range, not one tired team in the capital; language skills of the recruiter’s tongue; women officers for family outreach. Law. Standard operating procedures that separate sympathy, incitement, and conspiracy; UAPA and ordinary law used with file-able facts, not mood. Platforms. 24-hour liaison, hash-sharing of known terrorist content, rapid legal process for account data. Community. Beat officers who already know the youth, not a new communal census; parents and teachers as partners, not informers of last resort only. Livelihood. A written ask to the labour and skill departments so police are not fake employment exchanges, but jobs still arrive. Internal hygiene. Watch the force for communal bias and for penetration; rotate sensitive desks; mental health for officers who live online hate. Narrative. A DG who speaks once, calmly, that this State will not hunt a community and will not tolerate a handler. Fraternity (Preamble) is operational, not a civics slide.
(c) Intelligence-gathering plan
Aim: early, lawful, precise knowledge of who is tasked, who is only angry, and which account is a handler. Open source: cyber cell maps public endorsements, time patterns (the 6–8 hours), cross-platform identities, with audit logs so the unit cannot freelance a communal list. Human: beat-level trust, prison intelligence on older modules, family counselling that is not a trap for every worried mother. Technical: lawful interception only with statutory sanction; no bulk scrape of a whole faith. Financial: small hawala and wallet trails. Coordination: IB, NIA as needed, neighbouring SPs, university deans for campus rumours. Ethics: Kant forbids using a boy as a mere sensor without care for his future; Mill allows harm prevention when violence is near. Do not pay a communal entrepreneur to invent a module. Debrief in writing. Protect sources. Share with the government what is threat, not what is vote. The plan succeeds if the first arrest is of a handler, not of a boy who liked a video.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD REC[Global recruiter] --> Y[Unemployed youth] SM[Six to eight hours social media] --> Y R[Raman DG] --> CY[Lawful cyber disruption] R --> JOB[Skill and outreach] R --> INT[Precision intelligence] CY --> H[Handler not whole community]
Conclusion
Raman should disrupt the handler online and on the money trail, arrest on evidence, and treat unemployment as a State duty rather than a community stain. A communal sweep and a long internet ban would recruit for the other side. Intelligence must be lawful, local and aimed at the tasking adult, not at a faith.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Case study. With a multipronged strategy of the Central and State Governments, the naxalite problem has been resolved to a large extent. However, there are a few pockets where it still persists. Rohit is posted as SP (Special Operations). He established an excellent intelligence network. Leading a contingent, he got a message that about ten hard core naxalites were hiding in a particular village. His team overpowered all the naxalites along with their automatic weapons. Meanwhile more than five hundred tribal women surrounded the village demanding immediate release of the insurgents. Two of those apprehended were hard core top insurgents with prize money of ten lakhs on their heads. If he did not release them, the situation could get out of control. (a) What are the options available with Rohit to cope with the situation? (b) What are the ethical dilemmas being faced by Rohit? (c) Which of the options, do you think, would be more appropriate for Rohit to adopt and why? (d) In the present situation, what are the extra precautionary measures to be taken by the police in dealing with women protesters?
Next question in the 2024 paper (Q9). View answer →
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Should the DG ban the three apps?
A short, reasoned, targeted restriction during a proven spike can be argued. A weeks-long State blackout is usually a gift to rumours and to the recruiter’s private channels.
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Is outreach ‘soft’ on terror?
Exit ramps for the curious and hard cases for the tasked are one policy. Softness is ignoring the handler. Cruelty is booking a community.
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