The five alleged ISIS members who were arrested by the NIA in Hyderabad reportedly surfed the dark web and used it to communicate with their handlers in Syria.

The Times of India reported:

The five accused initially came into contact with their Syria-based handler, suspected to be Shafi Armar, through ISIS sympathiser groups on Facebook four months ago. The activity of the offenders had come under surveillance then. The accused installed deep web tools on computers and mobile phones as per the instructions of the handler. They used online communication tools such as Orbot to surf the internet without leaving traces and also used chatting tools such as Telegram and Chatsecure.

Earlier this week, the NIA on Tuesday conducted searches at three places in Hyderabad and seized seventeen live rounds of 9mm pistol, two computers and two scanners.

The raids were conducted on the basis of information gathered from the five accused who are currently in the custody of NIA.