(With agency inputs) Colombo blasts: NIA detains 2 Kerala youth over suspected links with key conspirators NEW DELHI: The National Investigation Agency ( NIA ) on Sunday carried out searches at three places in Kerala in connection with the ISIS Kasaragod module case.The NIA said three suspects were being questioned, adding that it was investigating an Islamic State module. "These persons are suspected to have links with some of the accused persons in the ISIS Kasaragod case who had exited India to join the proscribed terrorist organisation ISIS/Daish," the NIA said in a statement.The agency conducted the searches at houses of three suspects, two in Kasaragod and one in Palakkad , this morning.The NIA recoveries include mobile phones, SIM cards, memory cards, pen drives, diaries with handwritten notes in Arabic and Malayalam, DVDs of Dr Zakir Naik besides untitled DVDs, CDs with religious speeches, books of Zakir Naik and Syed Kutheb. "Digital devices will be forensically examined and analysed," the agency said.The NIA officials in Kasaragod also served notice to two people, identified as Abubacker and Ahamed, to report on Monday at the Kochi NIA office.Read this story in Bengali<doc-sep>Colombo blasts: NIA detains 2 Kerala youth over suspected links with key conspirators NEW DELHI/KOZHIKODE: In developments that come in the wake of the Sri Lanka bombings, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Sunday carried out searches at the houses of three suspects linked to an Islamic State-inspired module comprising over a dozen people from Kasargod in Kerala who had left India in 2016 to join IS in Nangarhar, Afghanistan.According to sources, the NIA team conducted raids at the houses of Ahamed Arafat and Aboobacker Siddique under the Vidyanagar police station limits in Kasargod. The house of a third person in Kollankode in Palakkad district was also searched.The NIA is questioning the suspects not only because they were in touch with Abdul Rashid Abdulla, the absconding leader of the IS Kasargod module, and other accused, but also to establish any possible link between the module and the bombers behind Easter Day attacks in Sri Lanka. The cross-straits connections of the National Thowheed Jamaat, which has been named in the Sri Lanka bombings, are being probed.Indian agencies have been tracking IS-motivated individuals and groups and the Wahhabi links of some Tamil Nadu-based organisations and the NTJ has been a matter of discussion in security circles. The IS claimed authorship of the Easter attacks carried out through local recruits who swore allegiance to IS leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi.Late last year, the NIA, while carrying out searches at the premises of six accused in the IS Coimbatore module case allegedly involving a plot to target Hindu leaders in south India, seized computer devices with jihadi videos of NTJ leader Zahran Hashim. The NIA alerted Indian intelligence agencies which developed information on terror attacks being plotted in Sri Lanka. The intelligence was shared with Sri Lankan authorities on three different occasions, including hours before the bombings.During searches at the residence of the three suspects on Sunday, mobile phones, SIM cards, memory cards, pen drives, diaries with handwritten notes in Arabic and Malayalam, DVDs of Salafi preacher Zakir Naik besides untitled DVDs, CDs with religious speeches, books of Zakir Naik and Syed Kutheb were seized. Digital devices will be forensically examined and analysed, the NIA said. Naik has surfaced as a motivator for terror cells and IS modules in the past few years. He remains abroad.As per NIA’s chargesheet in the IS Kasargod module case, Abdulla and his wife Ayisha had travelled to Sri Lanka in February 2016 to attend classes in Islamic studies at Al-Quma Arabic College in Colombo. In fact, two other couples from India, Bestin Vincent and his wife Mariyam and Ashfaq Majeed and Shamsiya, were also there with Abdulla attending the same course.However, when the teacher found out that Abdulla, Bestin and Ashfaq were propagating IS ideology and views of jihad among other students, they were expelled from the college and returned to India on April 14, 2016.It was after Abdulla returned from Sri Lanka that he began arranging resources for travel of 15 of his radicalised followers. All of them, except Yasmeen Zahid from Patna, managed to exit the country between May 31 and July 5, 2016, and are believed to have reached Nangarhar via Oman and Iran. Yasmeen, who was intercepted at New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport while trying to leave India in July 2016, now stands convicted in the case.“We are questioning the three suspects, whom we had been tracking for some time as they were in touch with Abdulla and other members of the Kasargod module based in Afghanistan. We want to know if similar videos of Hashim were shared with them and if there is any direct link between IS modules from India and the Sri Lanka bombers,” an NIA officer said.Hashim’s speeches in Tamil were popular with extreme Salafi groups in Kerala. He had been exhorting Muslims to shun ideas such as nationalism, democracy and pluralism as they had no place in Islam.Hashim wanted Muslims to keep a distance from “non-believers” and not have any emotional bonding with them.He had elucidated the concept of Al Wala Wal Bara (bonding and exclusion) in his speeches that was the favourite theme of extreme Salafis in Kerala. Police had registered a case against a Salafi preacher in Kerala for speaking on Al Wala Wal Bara after it was alleged that such hate speeches had contributed to the growth of the IS in Kerala.<doc-sep>
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Sunday raided three places in Kerala in connection with a suspected Islamic State module in which at least 22 Indians are said to have travelled to Afghanistan and Syria in 2016 to join the terrorist group, officials aware of the investigations said. The NIA said in a statement that it carried out searches at the houses of three suspects — two in Kasaragod and one in Palakkad. “These persons are suspected to have links with some of the accused persons in the said case who had exited India to join the proscribed terrorist organisation ISIS/ Daesh,” said the agency’s spokesperson Alok Mittal. The three people were being questioned after the raids but they did not appear to have travelled to IS-held territories, an NIA official said on condition of anonymity. The Kerala raids come in the wake of serial suicide bombings in Sri Lanka that killed 253 people on April 21. Some IS recruits based in Kasaragod and Palakkad recently travelled to Sri Lanka for religious studies, another NIA official said, asking not to be named. There was, however, no direct link between the Sunday raids and the Sri Lanka attacks, the official added. Central investigating agencies in India are looking for suspects who could be linked to the Sri Lanka blasts as the mastermind of the attack, Zahran Hashim, and another suicide bomber travelled to India in 2017 and 2018, as first reported by HT. During the searches on Sunday, a team of the NIA recovered digital devices, including mobile phones, SIM cards, memory cards, pen drives, diaries with handwritten notes in Arabic and Malayalam, and DVDs of speeches by controversial Islamic preacher Zakir Naik.