The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has detained Muhammad Riyaz Rasheed, who is accused of forcibly converting his wife’s religion and then attempting to sell her as sex slave to the ISIS at Chennai airport yesterday. Two others accused, Fawas Jamal and Siyad, were arrested earlier. As per reports, Rasheed was intercepted when he arrived from Jeddah via Colombo.
On Sunday, a case was registered by the NIA on complaint of his wife. The woman, who hails from Kerala, but settled in Gujarat, had approached the Kerala High Court in November last year seeking NIA probe against Riyaz who allegedly tried to take her to Syria from Saudi Arabia. Her petition says the forceful conversion and subsequent fraudulent marriage to Muhammad, were done with the help of Popular Front of India (PFI) members in Kannur.
The woman claims she met Riyaz from Thalassery in Kannur district of Kerala while studying in Bengaluru in 2014. She alleged that her marriage was registered using forged documents and she was blackmailed by him later. She also alleges that she was coerced to become a disciple of radical Islamic preacher Zakir Naik, who has been on the run after his name cropped up during an investigation in a bomb blast case in Bangladesh.
As per reports, besides Rasheed, Nahas Abdulkhader of Kannur (Kerala), Muhammed Nazish T K of Perigadi, Abdul Muhasin K of Kannur, Danish Najeeb of Bengaluru, Gazila of Bengaluru, Fawas Jamal of Peruvaram, Moin Patel of Bengaluru and Iliyas Mohammed of Bengaluru have been named in the FIR.
