The National Investigation Agency launched a probe against the ISIS module active in Kerala following the Sri Lankan Easter blast. As a part of the probe in connection with the Kasargod IS module case, the NIA arrested a Palakkad native on Monday, who was planning Sri Lanka style suicide attack in Kerala.
The 2016 Kasargod IS module case relates to the criminal conspiracy hatched by the accused persons from Kasaragod district of Kerala and their associates since Ramadan, 2015, with the intention of joining and furthering the objectives of ISIS Daish.
As part of the conspiracy, 14 accused from Kasaragod district had left India or their workplaces in Middle-East Asia between mid-May and early July 2016, before travelling to Afghanistan or Syria, where they joined the ISIS (Daish).
Meanwhile, the arrested terrorist, Riyaz Aboobacker, alias Abu Dujanan 28, of Kollengode, Palakkad, during his interrogation, revealed that he was planning to conduct a suicide bomb blast in Kerala, similar to the Sri Lankan blast.
An official statement by NIA said that the accused admitted of following speeches and videos of Zahran Hashim of Sri Lanka for more than a year and had also followed the speeches of Zakir Naik, the radical Islamist preacher against who India has requested the Interpol to issue a red corner notice.
Zahran Hashim is the Islamic extremist who was the mastermind behind the dastardly Sri Lankan Easter Sunday bomb blast which killed more than 250 people leaving more than 500 injured.
He also admitted that he was in contact with absconding terrorist, also accused in the Kasargod IS module case, Abdul Rashid Abdulla alias Abu Isa for a long time online. He had been following his audio clips, including the byte which Abu Isa had circulated on various social media platforms, which instigated others to carry out terror attacks in India.
Aboobacker further disclosed that he has also been chatting online with Abdul Khayoom alias Abu Khalid (the accused in the Valapattanam ISIS case) who was believed to be in Syria.
However, the NIA believed that the group led by Aboobacker was in touch with Abdul Rashid, Ashfaq Majeed and Abdul Khayoom, who had already migrated to Afghanistan and Syria.
Aboobacker will be produced before the NIA Court in Kochi on Tuesday.
Prior to this, the NIA arrested three youths in Kerala in connection with the Easter bombings in Sri Lanka. The arrests were made during a raid on an Islamic State (IS) module in Kasaragod, Kerala. Likewise, these arrested youths were also reportedly in contact with terror leader Zahran Hashim and were said to have been inspired by his ideologies.
