The 31-year-old IS sympathiser, who was arrested on Thursday from Aurangabad, was produced in special court on Friday and has been remanded to police custody till July 20.
The 31-year-old IS sympathiser, who was arrested on Thursday from Aurangabad, was produced in special court on Friday and has been remanded to police custody till July 20. The arrested accused has been identified as Naser Bin Yafai Chaus (31) and is a resident of Parbhani district in the state and is civil contractor by profession.
According to ATS officials, the investigations are still underway and they are trying to find out whether Chaus had allegedly recruited anybody else in the state, or not. Chaus, was arrested on Thursday for allegedly communicating with an ISIS operative. Sources had informed that Chaus had been in touch with a man identified as Farookh in Syria and had expressed willingness to move to Syria.
An ATS official commenting on the case told The Asian Age that officials are now looking for any other people the accused may have been in contact with. “He had been plotting with Farookh to hold a terror strike in the state and they had planned various methods. He had been asked to stay back in India and form a module to hold a terror attack in Maharashtra. So we are trying to see how far he had gone with this and whether he had managed to rope anybody else in,” said a senior ATS officer.
Officials who had seized his laptop and mobile are analysing it for further clues. “We will be sending the devices for technical analysis to get all the data from them,” said the officer.
Chaus was arrested after ATS officials found that he was very active on websites and forums that discussed banned terrorist organisation Islamic State. After tracking his movements and investigating, the officers found that Chaus had been contacted by a man who claimed to be an IS operative and he had allegedly recruited Chaus into the IS.
