New Delhi, June 22: After rigorous efforts of six months, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) filed charge sheet after it busted an Islamic State (IS) module in Uttar Pradesh’s Amroha district and arrested 10 operatives accused in the matter. The NIA had registered a case in December last year against Mufti Suhail and nine others.
Filing the charge sheet in the Patiala Court, the agency had alleged that Suhail had formed an IS module “to commit terror activities and the module is amassing weapons and explosives". The NIA also alleged that this module was named ‘Harkat-ul-Harb-E-Islam’ (Movement for War of Islam) and it owed allegiance to the ISIS. This was with the aim of “wanting to establish an ISIS Caliphate in India by resorting to large scale terrorist attacks in and around the National Capital Region".
In its charge sheet, the probe agency stated that investigation has established that accused Mufti Suhail and other co-accused persons “entered into a criminal conspiracy to wage a violent jihad against the government by use of weapons and explosives to establish an ISIS Caliphate in India. The module was being guided by three ISIS handlers based abroad and it made extensive use of encrypted social media applications and chat platforms. These have been recovered from their mobile phones."
The NIA, along with the Delhi and Uttar Pradesh police, had in December seized a large amount of explosives, weapons, ammunition, including a country-made rocket launcher, ₹7.5 lakh in cash, nearly 100 mobile phones, 135 SIM cards, laptops and memory cards.
The NIA spokesperson said, “They were in touch with a handler abroad. The gang leader is Jaffrey Sohail who works in an Amroha mosque in Uttar Pradesh as a maulvi (cleric) and he was guiding these boys. They wanted to make several bombs, and we found 120 alarm clocks, potassium nitrate, potassium chlorate, sulphur and sugar paste.”
The agency added that the group had been in existence since September last year. The group was self-funded and its members were engineering and other graduate students from middle income families.