Even as Pakistan seeks proof of their hand in the panic campaign which led to the exodus of Indians from North East, the police probing these cases are struggling to find the source of the group/persons who generated these messages in the first place.
The government has gone about banning sites galore while the police in Bangalore and Pune continue to question people who sent out the messages.
In Bangalore, a person by the name Anees Pasha and three others are under the scanner while in Pune the police continue to question four persons.
Anees Pasha of Bangalore was the first of the catches for the police and his questioning led to the arrest of three more persons. During the investigation, Pasha who owns a mobile phone shop in Bangalore revealed that apart from the three other persons who are under arrest, there are four more persons involved in this incident. According to the police, Anees alone sent out over 4000 messages which led to the panic among the people of North East. Anees has been running a mobile shop for many years now. He specialised in mobile phone repair and interestingly a lot of police personnel sought his services when they had issues with their cellular phones.
In Pune the police have nabbed four persons and have found inflammatory messages on their mobile phones. Even here the problem is similar, they have got leads to other persons, but are unable to ascertain as to whether they belong to a particular group or not. Central Intelligence agencies on the other hand have put some organisations under the scanner and say that some of their people helped circulated the messages.
In both the cases at Pune and Bangalore, police have managed to get access to the mobile phones of these persons, but they have not yet found a direct foreign link from where the messages could have originated. Police sources in both these cities which have taken the help of the cyber cell say that they will need to arrest more persons in order to ascertain the trail.
In addition to this the police are planning on questioning a few more people who have received these messages apart from checking out the logs on the phones with the help of the respective service providers.
At Bangalore the initial part of the probe has revealed that Pasha had sent out a couple of messages just to spread panic. He does not have any direct link with any group and decided to forward the messages that he got on his phone. Thanks to his expertise with the mobile phone, he sent out a few thousand messages and this started to spread like wild fire. The police for the moment feel that this is an individual operation, but also add that they will track Pasha’s source in order to find out who was really behind it. Pasha has been booked for inciting communal tensions.
While speaking to the police both at Bangalore and Pune, one gets the impression that all these persons had a common source from where the messages generated. It was sent from a foreign country in bulk to many persons in India who in turn forwarded the messages. The cyber cell of both these cities will play a crucial role in the investigation and the service providers too would have to do their bit.
In addition to this the police of various cities from where the exodus was high are coordinating with each other in order to find the trail of these messages. It has clearly been targeted at places where the population of North East people has been high. However during the investigations it has been found that the majority of the messages were circulated in Bangalore since the city hosts 100000 people from North East. It has emerged from outside the country and landed in the mobile phones and websites of some locals who in turn have forwarded it. Some have forwarded it just as a routine, while there are a few who did it according to a plan, police sources say.
Vicky Nanjappa 
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