According to officials, mobster Shahzad Bhatti, who is located in Pakistan, allegedly employed a “gaming mission” approach to find, test, and progressively recruit young people from Mumbai by giving them relatively innocuous jobs on Instagram before moving on to more delicate duties.
According to sources in the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), Bhatti was in contact with approximately thirty young Mumbai residents between the ages of sixteen and twenty via Instagram.
Officials discovered that in order to gauge the children’s readiness to follow directions, they were first given straightforward, task-based assignments that resembled stages in an online game.
According to officials, the first set of tasks required the young people to take pictures or make brief recordings of public spaces, government buildings, and police stations. In order to prevent arousing suspicions, the actions were purposefully presented as normal.
Sources claim that none of the young people followed the directions. Bhatti allegedly once instructed a young person to take pictures at a Haryana police station.
He didn’t go there or finish the assignment. Officials assume that the handlers did not provide him any more instructions after he disregarded the assignment.
Officials have found one instance where the missions are thought to have gone beyond reconnaissance, despite the fact that the majority of the young people apparently refused to take action. According to sources, Bhatti’s network allegedly gave Krishna Mishra (20), one of the two men recently detained by the Uttar Pradesh ATS, instructions to record a delicate installation.
The Uttar Pradesh ATS detained Mishra and his co-accused, Daniyal Ashraf, for allegedly conducting location reconnaissance and keeping connections with handlers in Pakistan. Mishra allegedly took pictures of the Narpoli Police Station in Bhiwandi and filmed an 18-second video of a nearby bridge, which he then allegedly sent to handlers in Pakistan.
The Uttar Pradesh ATS claims that Bhatti and his colleagues, including Abid Jatt alias Abid Chhal, Ajmal Gujar, Hammad Memon, Rana Hunain, and Ashraf Bashir Alam, recruited the accused via Instagram and other social media platforms.
According to officials, the two gave their handlers access to photos, videos, and location information of police facilities and other critical locations. Allegedly, encrypted conversations, video calls, reconnaissance footage, and bank transaction records were among the digital evidence found on their cell phones.
As part of a broader crackdown on people suspected of having ties to Bhatti and other mafia syndicates located in Pakistan, the Maharashtra ATS conducted coordinated searches at over 40 locations in May, including Mumbai and the Mumbai Metropolitan Region.
The “task-based” method, according to security agencies, was created to mentally shape recruits by starting them with low-risk duties and progressively moving them into more severe and possibly illegal actions. In order to find more operatives, financial connections, and overseas handlers connected to the network, the Maharashtra ATS is continuing its forensic examination of confiscated gadgets and digital communications.
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