New Delhi: Uttar Pradesh, which was until six years ago a safe haven for international terrorist organizations, has become free of them in the Yogi Government, thanks to the effective action taken against them by the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS). ISIS, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Al-Qaeda, ISI and other terrorist organizations have no presence in Uttar Pradesh today because of ATS’ massive crackdown on these terror groups.
But, there was a time when pro-Pakistan terrorist organizations based in UP threatened the security of the whole country. What was worse, the state saw governments withdrew cases against terrorists to appease their vote banks.
The state’s Azamgarh district was known as the “nursery of terror”. However, things have changed in the past six years and Azamgarh is actively taking part in the state’s development.
No presence of Jaish, Al Qaeda & ISIS in state
Better coordination between the ATS and the central agencies, infrastructure upgrades, establishing SPOTs in Ghaziabad, Lucknow, and Ayodhya, and forming OPS 11 field units and 18 teams have contributed in this decisive fight against terror in the state, and UP has emerged as a state free from terrorism and Naxal extremism.
In the last six years, the Yogi Government has provided ATS with state-of-the-art technology, weapons, cyber experts, modern software, apps, world-class training, tools, digital software forensics, video forensics, big data analysis etc to enable them to strengthen the battle against terror.
In the last one year alone, the ATS has nabbed 10 terrorists with bounties on their heads. Apart from this, ATS has caught 21 people from ISIS, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Al-Qaeda, ISI and other terrorist organisations.
ATS equipped with sophisticated weapons
At the same time, the ATS has succeeded in arresting 13 people belonging to PFI, Rohingya, Bangladeshi and Naxal extremist organizations. In addition, the Yogi govt has taken effective anti-fake currency measures.
Within a year, the UP ATS team arrested 11 people using illegal SIM boxes and 15 supplying illegal weapons. Along with this, effective steps have been taken by the Yogi regime to arrest wanted terrorists from other states.
It is worth mentioning here that in the first decade of the century, one after the other terrorist blasts rocked Uttar Pradesh, horrifying the general public. The then ruling party’s tacit consent often allowed terrorist organisations to flourish in the state. dozens of bomb blasts, one after the other, made hundreds of people victims of religious fanatics’ bigotry.
The serial bomb blasts at Varanasi railway station and Sankatmochan temple, the terrorist attacks in Lucknow, Faizabad, and Banaras courts, Shramjeevi Express bombing in Jaunpur that resulted in the loss of life were some of the major incidents that took place in Uttar Pradesh during that period.
However, with the change of power, peace was restored in the country, and Uttar Pradesh was set free of terrorist attacks in the last nine years of Modi-Yogi rule. The strategy of strengthening the anti-terror machinery played a significant role in this. Separating the anti-terrorist campaign from politics and rising above the profit-loss of the vote bank, the result of the efforts made is that terrorism has been completely eradicated from Uttar Pradesh in the last nine years.
