NIA raids 5 places in J&K, K'taka, arrests 4 for raising funds for IS

New Delhi: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Wednesday carried out searches at five locations in Jammu and Kashmir, and Karnataka in the ISIS Kerala module case and arrested four persons, involved in raising funds and radicalising and motivating more people to join the banned terror organisation.

An NIA spokesperson here said that agency personnel, along with state police units, conducted simultaneous searches at five locations -- three in Jammu and Kashmir and one each in Mangaluru and Bengaluru in Karnataka.

The official said that searches were conducted at the premises of accused, who were continuously in touch with arrested accused Mohammed Ameen and his associates through various groups or channels on encrypted chat platforms and had raised funds for furtherance of activities of the IS.

"During searches, several digital devices including laptops, mobile phones, hard disk drives, pen drives, multiple SIM cards of different service providers, and incriminating documents were seized," the official said.

"Subsequent to the searches, four accused persons associated with the IS were arrested. They have been identified as Obaid Hamid, a resident of Srinagar, Muzammil Hassan Bhat, a resident of Bandipora, Ammar Abdul Rahman, a resident of Mangaluru, and Shankar Venkatesh Perumal aka Ali Muaviya, a resident of Bengaluru.

"They were involved in raising funds and radicalising and motivating more people to join the IS," the official said.

The NIA had registered a suo moto case against seven known and other unknown accused persons on March 5 this year pertaining to terrorist activities of Ameen aka Abu Yahya, a resident of Kerala and his associates, who had been running various IS propaganda channels on different social media platforms such as Telegram, Hoop and Instagram for propagating its violent jihadi ideology and radicalising and recruiting new members for the module.

Earlier, te NIA had conducted searches and had arrested three accused persons, namely Ameen, Dr Rahees Rasheed and Mus'Hab Anwar in this case in March 2021.

The official said that during investigation, it has been revealed that after the decline of IS in Syria/Iraq, Ameen had visited Kashmir in March, 2020 for 'Hijrah' (religious migration) and for engaging in terrorist acts and had also raised funds in association with Kashmir based accused Mohammad Waqar Lone aka Wilson Kashmiri and his associates.

"As part of conspiracy, funds were also transferred to Lone by the accused in the case through banking channels and digital payment methods on the directions of Ameen," the official said.

The official said that Ameen and his associates were also radicalising gullible Muslim youths for joining jihad and unlawful activities in India and had been successful in expanding the network in Kashmir and parts of Kerala, and Karnataka.