The nine men arrested from Kerala’s Ernakulam and West Bengal on Saturday by the National Investigation Agency (NIA), alleged to be part of an inter-state terror module of Al Qaeda, had plans to travel to Jammu and Kashmir to deliver weapons, the agency has said. The weapons and home-made explosives were to be delivered for their associates, as they continued to take orders from their Pakistan-based handlers, NIA officials said.
The revelations came as the NIA busted the inter-state terror module after it carried out searches at multiple locations in Murshidabad in West Bengal and Ernakulam in Kerala. The NIA arrested nine Al Qaeda terrorists — three from Kerala and six from West Bengal.
The Al Qaeda men have been identified as Murshid Hassan, Yakoob Bishwas and Morshraf Hussien, all three residents of Ernakulam. They were picked up from Kochi. The others have been identified as Najmus Sakib, Abu Sufiyan, Mainul Mondal, Leu Yean Ahmed, Al Mamun Kamal and Atitur Rehman, were all residents of Murshidabad.
An NIA official related to the probe told IANS, "These terrorists were planning to go to Kashmir for weapons delivery to their handlers." They had amassed potassium nitrate from firecrackers bought in large amounts.
Reportedly, while NIA has not seized weapons from men arrested from Ernakulam, it has seized explosives from those arrested from West Bengal.
"During the raids the agency got a huge cache of firecrackers. They bought the firecrackers to hide procurement of huge amounts of potassium required to make the IEDs," a senior NIA official related to the probe told IANS.
The official said that the arrested were in touch with their Pakistan-based handler Hamza. They planned attacks on several vital installations in Delhi-NCR and other parts of the country with an aim to kill innocent people and strike terror in their minds.
The agency registered a case on September 11. "NIA also recovered the crude IEDs along with the switches, batteries etc from terrorist Sufiyan's residential premises in Murshidabad," the official said.
The official said that Hassan was the main leader of the terror module. The NIA also recovered sharp weapons, country-made firearms, a locally fabricated body armour, articles and literature used for making home-made explosive devices from their possession.
Kerala Police discovered that Morshraf Hussien was in Kerala for the past one decade and was working in a textile shop at Perumbavoor, near Aluva. Hassan had started to live in Kerala since the beginning of the nationwide lockdown. These men were from diverse walks of life from second year graduate student to farmer, tailor, cook, electrician, computer science graduate.
Those arrested from Kerala were also originally from West Bengal. A man who was staying in the same building as Hassan, said the men came to stay on rent during the pandemic-induced lockdown.
According to NIA officials, Hassan was a casual labourer, Bishwas was a salesman in a garment shop and Hussein was a cook. Meanwhile, among those arrested from West Bengal, Rahman has been pursuing graduation and is a second year arts student, Sufiyan is engaged in farming and was a tailor earlier, Ahmed is an electrician in a college, Mondal is a cook, Sakib is pursuing graduation in computer science and Mamun is a mason and also a driver.
With IANS inputs