Delhi Police to set up deradicalisation centre

Delhi Police will soon have its own “deradicalisation” centre and a monitoring team to track down youths being radicalised through social media and provide them with right counselling.

The decision came after the police’s anti-terrorism unit Special Cell detained 10 youths for their alleged ideological leaning towards banned outfit Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and later let them off, failing to gather adequate evidence.

However, six of them were summoned and questioned at the Special Cell office for a few hours on Monday, after which the investigators let them off again.

They were confronted with evidence which the agency has acquired from a pen drive recovered from one of the three arrested accused and the decoded input obtained from the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In).

CERT-In is government of India’s nodal agency that deals with cyber security threats, which Delhi Police had approached for help in the case.

“The idea of a deradicalisation centre has been approved by the Police Commissioner. The centre will have counselling facilities and a social network monitoring team to track down youths who are radicalised through social media and are in the early stages,” Special Commissioner of Police (Special Cell) Arvind Deep said. He further said “once tracked, the youths will be counselled by experts, including clinical psychologists, psychiatrists and community leaders, in the right way and within the right time.” 

While four of the 10 youths who were released on Saturday have been given a clean chit, the police had arranged for them counselling sessions with a clinical psychologist, the other six will be summoned on and off for questioning at the Special Cell office in Lodhi Colony here.