On 7th January 2023, the Special Task Force of the Kolkata police arrested two men with suspected ISIS links. The arrests took place at the eastern slope of Vidyasagar Sethu, Kolkata. The arrested two are identified as Mohammad Saddam and Syed Ahmed.
The two were travelling on a bike when the Special Task Force officers chased and arrested them. They were passing from the second Hooghly bridge connecting Kolkata with Howrah. Police recovered one laptop and two mobile phones from the arrested suspects.
Two persons – Md. Saddam and Sayeed Ahmed – have been arrested from the eastern slope of Vidyasagar Sethu, Kolkata for recruiting young Muslim youths and collecting arms ammunition and explosives and to raise funds for terror: West Bengal STF pic.twitter.com/lSRuHQA3Bb
— ANI (@ANI) January 7, 2023
Reportedly, the two were under the watch of security agencies for some time as it was found that they were circulating jihadi propaganda materials for organisations like ISIS. After getting information that they were going to attend a meeting, the STF team tracked them and caught them at the Vidyasagar Sethu.
Following the arrests, the police conducted searches at several places in Kolkata. Mohammad Saddam’s house at Aftabuddin Lane in Howrah and Syed Ahmed’s house located in the Golam Hossain Lane area of Shibpur Thana were also searched by the police. During this search, a laptop, debit cards, a few mobile phones and documents were seized. Moreover, incriminatory content was found on the laptop.
A police officer said, “We had got a tip-off that Saddam and Ahmed were going to attend a secret meeting in the Khidirpur area. After arresting the duo, the police also conducted search operations at their residences and recovered some debit cards and electronic evidence from there. Some jihadi contents were also recovered from the laptop seized from them.”
He continued by saying that preliminary inquiry had shown that their major activities were brainwashing young people into joining the terrorist organization ISIS and securing funding to expand their network throughout the state. Ahmed and Saddam both live in the Howrah district.
“On social media, these two were promoting anti-national activities and radicalism. Their aim was to brainwash people, particularly young people in order to entice them to participate in jihadi activities. They used to disseminate footage of explosions and killings in order to stir anti-national sentiment among young people,” the police officer said. He also said that several youths seem to have fallen into their trap.
According to police, Md. Saddam is a mechanical engineering student at Aliah University in New Town. He along with Syed Ahmed used social media to brainwash youths to join militant organizations and incite them to engage in anti-national activities. They were using propaganda videos for this purpose. Security agencies suspect that some handler in the middle east is behind them. It is suspected that Saddam was in contact with IS operatives in Pakistan and West Asia.
The arrested individuals were presented at the Bankshall court in Kolkata. The court remanded these suspects to STF custody till January 19. Kolkata’s police commissioner Vineet Goyal confirmed the arrests and told that further investigation, in this case, is going on.
Apart from the interrogation of the two in custody, their electronic records are also being examined by the police to learn more about their network.
