Ex-IM man said to be ringleader of plot to target cities, vital installations
Ex-IM man said to be ringleader of plot to target cities, vital installations
In a major crackdown on the Islamic State and its followers and sympathisers in India, the security agencies arrested or detained over a dozen young men across major cities in the country for allegedly having allegiance to ISIS terrorists and forming modules to carry out terror strikes at vital locations and crowded places.
At least 14 young men were arrested or detained Friday by the NIA and other agencies — five of them were arrested and the other nine detained. All ISIS suspects were somehow connected with one “Yusuf”, believed to be Safi Armar, a former Indian Mujahideen (IM) member.
Of the 14 taken into custody, three belong to Mumbai, four each from Hyderabad and Bengaluru and one each from Mangaluru, Tumkur (Karnataka) and Lucknow — all key cities where ISIS’ social media propaganda has been successful due to easy Internet access, raising the alarm within the security establishment of key cities becoming the targets for ISIS recruitment. Some youths were said to be software engineers. They were part of a group named “Janood-ul-Khalifa-e-Hind” (Army of Caliph of India), a group whose ideology is almost like that of ISIS.
The NIA gave the names of those arrested as Muttabir Mustaq Sheikh from Thane district near Mumbai, Mohammad Nafees Khan of Hyderabad, Mohammad Shareef Mounuddin Khan of Hyderabad, Najmul Huda of Mangalore and Mohammad Afzal of Bengaluru. Mustaq Sheikh is learnt to be the ringleader and an unaccounted sum of '6 lakhs was recovered from him by the law-enforcement agencies, which is suspected to have been transferred into his accounts using the hawala route.
The raids were carried out simultaneously in five states — Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh. The raids come at a time when a possible terror attack has been averted. The Punjab and Delhi police forces on Friday sounded an alert after it found the dead body of the driver of a taxi hired by three unidentified persons in Himachal Pradesh’s Kangra, in the aftermath of the terror attack on the Pathankot airbase.
“We have sounded an alert in our area (Pathankot). We are taking this matter very seriously and we are making efforts to locate the missing taxi,” Pathankot’s senior superintendent of police R.K. Bakshi said. The Delhi police also sounded an alert and asked citizens to stay vigilant.
“The Alto car is missing. Search operations are on. Stay Alert!” the pinned tweet on Delhi Police’s official handle read. The Delhi police issued a high alert, fearing that the three may enter the national capital to execute some terror activity close to Republic Day. The taxi driver, identified as Vijay Kumar, a resident of Gaggal village in Kangra district, was found dead on Wednesday at the Kalta bridge in Kangra and his taxi missing, the police said.
The SSP said the white-colour Alto taxi with registration number HP 01D 2440 was not hired from Pathankot. “Neither the taxi was hired from Pathankot nor the incident (recovery of body) has happened here (Pathankot),” he said. Mr Bakshi added three Punjabi-speaking persons had hired the taxi from Gaggal in Kangra district for Pathankot. “Three Punjabi-speaking people had hired the taxi from Gaggal at 8 pm on January 14. But on Wednesday, the body of the driver was recovered from the subdivision Jawali in HP, which is about 40-50 kms from Pathankot,” he said.
Asked about the threat perception, Delhi police chief B.S. Bassi urged people in the city to remain alert without disclosing any further details, citing security concerns.
Meanwhile, of the nine persons detained in the nationwide crackdown, sources said one may be let off while the remaining eight maybe arrested shortly. However, the families of some of the arrested people claimed they had nothing to do with any terror plot and they were innocent.
The NIA crackdown came in the early hours of Friday. Sources said Sheikh had designated himself as “Ameer” of the group and Huda as “Ameer-e-Wyulat” (finance), and they were in touch on the Internet with some persons believed to be from ISIS based in Syria.
They said these people had been under surveillance for quite some time and the decision to arrest them was taken as the group received “instructions” for carrying out “some sensational” attacks in the country. All the youths, in the age group of 25 to 30, are educated, with some of them having completed studies in software engineering, the sources said.
The NIA and other sleuths recovered laptops, explosive material, detonators, wires, batteries and hydrogen peroxide, besides “jihadi literature”, the sources said. The sleuths also found 42 mobile phones, including eight from Ameer of the newly-formed terror group, which had allegedly got hawala money from overseas, the sources said.
All the arrested accused are being brought to the national capital for detailed interrogation as a preliminary inquiry indicated there was a proper structure of the terror outfit.
The attempt of the group was to spread their activities to Hyderabad, Mumbai, Delhi, Assam, Bengaluru, Uttrakhand and Karnataka, the sources said. In the past eight months, members of the group had visited some locations within the country and photographed some iconic installations, the sources said, but did not identify the places visited by them.
The MHA spokesman, making attempts to downplay the ISIS links, said online radicalisation was a worldwide phenomenon. “We have been monitoring many people for their online activities,” he said. “This is a larger group who have direct or cross links with Yusuf. His links with ISIS is the subject of investigation as his location was not known as yet,” he said.
