Hyderabad IS arrests: NIA gets custody of 5 people, to probe source of funding

NIA stated that it wanted to question the accused on the possibility of recovering more explosives.

Hyderabad

: A local court on Friday remanded five people, arrested by NIA here on charges of their involvement in a terror module suspected to be linked to Islamic State (IS) and conspiring to carry out bomb attacks, in police custody for 12 days.

Metropolitan Sessions Judge K Rajkumar allowed the NIA's petition seeking their custody and directed that the accused be produced before the court on July 12.

Mohammed Ibrahim Yazdani alias Ibbu, Habeeb Mohammed alias Sir, Mohammed Ilyas Yazdani, Abdullah Bin Ahmed Al Amoodi and Muzaffar Hussain Rizwan were arrested by NIA following a series of searches conducted at 10 locations in Old City area on June 29, with the assistance of Hyderabad Police. The agency had detained six others, including a techie, during the operation.

On Thursday, the court had remanded them in judicial custody for 14 days though NIA sought their police custody for further examination.

In its application, the investigating agency stated that the accused need to be taken to Maharashtra and Rajasthan and it also wanted to question them on the possibility of recovering more explosives.

During the arguments for police custody, NIA said they also wanted to probe the source of funding for the activities of the accused and about their contacts, if any. However, defence sought dismissal of the NIA petition, saying it is not maintainable.

NIA had claimed that the five men were getting instructions from the West Asia-based terrorist organisation ISIS for planning and carrying out terror acts in India.

In its remand report submitted to the court earlier, the agency had said the accused had acquired weapons and explosive materials to carry out violent terrorist attacks and were in touch with ISIS.

Following its prior investigation, on June 22 NIA had lodged an FIR for "criminal conspiracy to wage war against the Government of India" by collecting weapons and explosive materials by targeting public places, religious sites and sensitive government buildings in various parts of India.

According to the agency, the gang was preparing improvised explosive devices for carrying out blasts, and was being guided by an online handler, suspected to be based in Iraq/Syria.

Along with explosive materials, the agency had recovered two semi-automatic pistols with ammunition, an air gun with telescopic sight and shooting practice target boards, a large number of digital gadgets including six laptops, about 40 mobile phones, 32 SIM cards, and a large number of hard disks, memory cards, pen drives and tabs during its search.