29-year-old Riyas Aboobacker, who was arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Monday, was on Tuesday remanded to 30 days custody by the NIA court in Kochi.
Riyas Aboobacker alias Abu Dujana, who is a resident of Palakkad in Kerala was arrested on charges of conspiring to carry out terror attacks in the state. While interrogation, Riyas told the NIA that he had been following speeches and videos of Hashim, a radical Tamil-speaking cleric who was the mastermind of the Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka, which left 253 people dead and over 500 injured.
Riyas told the agency that he had been following Hashim for over a year and has also followed the speeches of Zakir Naik, an absconding Indian Islamic preacher and founder of the Islamic Research Foundation.
He was being questioned by the NIA since Sunday in a case related to the Kasaragod module of the Islamic State.
According to NIA, Riyas was planning to carry out terror attacks in various tourist attraction sites in the state such as Kochi.
The suspect, NIA said, revealed during his interrogation that he had been in online contact with an absconding suspect Abdul Rashid Abdulla for a long time and has been following his audio clips, including the clip which he had circulated on the social media instigating others to carry out terror attacks in India.
Aboobacker revealed that he was also having online chat with Abdul Khayoom, a suspect in Valapattanam Islamic State case, who was believed to be in Syria, said the anti-terror agency.
The NIA had earlier received inputs that a group of four persons was in contact with some accused identified as Abdul Rashid, Ashfaq Majeed and Abdul Khayoom who had already migrated to Afghanistan and Syria.
After verification, NIA carried out searches at three places (two in Kasaragod and one in Palakkad district) on Sunday.
The agency said three group members have been interrogated for their Islamic State links and their plans and that this case was registered in July 2016 following the disappearance of 15 youths from Kasaragod and their subsequent migration to the Islamic State (14 persons went to Afghanistan and one person to Syria).