The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has arrested a man named Zufri Jawhar Damudi from Karnataka's Bhatkal in the Kerala ISIS module case. He had created multiple fake IDs on different chat platforms, officials said on Friday. The official said that Jawhar was using multiple fake IDs on different chat platforms to communicate with people and that he was radicalising and recruiting youths to join the group.
Jawhar’s arrest comes two days after the NIA arrested four persons following searches at five locations in Jammu and Kashmir, Bengaluru and Mangaluru. The official said that searches were conducted at the premises of the accused, who were allegedly continuously in touch with arrested accused Mohammed Ameen and his associates through various groups, channels on encrypted chat platforms, and had raised funds for furtherance of activities of the IS. Ameen allegedly ran ISIS propaganda channels on social media to radicalise people and recruit them. He was arrested under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act in March this year.
On Wednesday, the NIA during searches seized several digital devices including laptops, mobile phones, hard disk drives, pen drives, multiple SIM cards of different service providers, and incriminating documents. "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 had 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 allegedly been running various IS propaganda channels on different social media platforms such as Telegram, Hoop and Instagram for propagating the ideology and radicalising and recruiting new members for the module.
Earlier, the NIA had conducted searches and had arrested three accused persons, Ameen, Rahees Rasheed and Mus'Hab Anwar in this case in March 2021.