The interrogation of Lalit Mohan Jha, the sixth accused in the Parliament security breach incident and the alleged mastermind, has revealed that main motive of the group was to send across a message and not spread terror through their act, sources have told CNN-News18.
As per top Intelligence sources, Jha would avidly research the security system in and around Parliament and a crucial lesson he learnt was that technical evidence always stays in the system and can be tracked. The group was also aware that they needed a foolproof way to garner the media’s attention and hence ruckus in Parliament was the only tactic to get their message across.
“On Wednesday, when the accused decided to breach Lok Sabha’s security, Jha had created two teams — one, for inside Parliament though he was unsure of the plan’s success due to security arrangements and two, for a protest outside the premises to send a strong message to lawmakers and media that everything is not well,” they said.
The sources added that after Jha live-streamed the ruckus on Facebook, he realised that he would be arrested and hence he went to Rajasthan by bus and destroyed all technical evidence. “He was aware of WhatsApp’s weak encryption and availability of data to agencies so they would switch on different encrypted apps from time to time,” they said.
Initial investigation suggests that the accused have no foreign linkages and no details of funding have emerged so far but agencies are not ruling out that funding came through a third person who was unaware of being linked to a hostile group.
Agencies are already on the hunt for the accused’s association with political parties who directly or indirectly instigated them and guided them to create ruckus around Vijay Chowk or Parliament.
‘Scope of Parliament Breach Probe to be Widened’
As per top Intelligence sources, the scope of the probe into the Lok Sabha security breach will be widened “because only the ideology of the accused cannot motivate them to this extent”.
Investigations suggest the accused were aware of the repercussions of the protest in Parliament but someone motivated them from behind the scenes to go ahead with the plan.
“Jha seems to be the mastermind but he possibly did all this on behalf of someone else. Neelam’s past association is definitely one of the motivations but meeting on the Facebook page and reaching this conclusion of attack is really serious,” they said.
Neelam, 36, was one of the two protesters arrested from outside Parliament for opening a smoke canister and raising slogans against “dictatorship”.
“It is correct that they wanted publicity, but there is some invisible hand that guided them to reach Parliament for the same,” sources said.
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