ISIS men tried to build ‘Caliphate’s army’ in Hyderabad

The ISIS terror sympathisers arrested in Hyderabad in the last three weeks, wanted to build a terrorist outfit under the banner of Jund al Kaliphate fi Bilad al Hind—JKBH—“army of the Caliphate in the land of India”, to mobilise Muslims under Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, based out of Syria. The outfit was meant to be a religious messaging platform from where the need for a pure form of Islam and its practice would be preached to the Muslim youth. JKBH was supposed to be an umbrella body for both spiritual messengers and terrorists.

This has been revealed by the seven ISIS supporters who were grilled by a team of sleuths led by the National Investigating Agency (NIA) here this week. The counter-terror intelligence wing of Telangana police too was a part of the team, which is busy preparing a charge-sheet against the accused, sources who told The Sunday Guardian.

The investigators, who have so far arrested 55 persons owing allegiance to the ISIS in the last 18 months in India, have come across evidence that a concerted effort was made to build an India specific terror organisation to propagate the spread of the Caliphate here.

The NIA has shifted one of the two terrorists, Ataullah Rehaman, 30, who was arrested early this month, to Delhi for further questioning along with the 19 ISIS suspects, who were charge-sheeted in a special court at Patiala complex last week. Ataullah was found to be one of the key coordinators in luring the youth into JKBH, said the sources in the Telangana police.

Another key member, Syed Naimatullah Hussaini, 42, was the spiritual messenger who propagated the need to create a puritanical form of Islam under the Caliphate. Ataullah trained and looked after logistics for the building of the organisation. The first five youth—two Yazdani brothers, Habeeb, Irfan and Abdullah bin Ahmed—were found to be following their instructions.

The police has found that the Hyderabadi youth who were arrested as well as those who were allowed to go after some grilling are in touch with a host of militant organisations based out of Pakistan and Bangladesh. They were asked to create fake passports, mobile SIMs and Aadhar cards for migrant militants.

The ISIS ideologues, who want to radicalise the local youth, have chosen Hyderabad as the base for JKBH, as its Old City and outskirts has a vast Muslim population. That the city is centrally located between Northern Karnataka and Southern Maharashtra too accounts for the presence of a large number of Muslims.

It was also found that a large number of Muslim youth in their 20s and early 30s are drawn to their preaching on social media and want to play an active role in establishing the Caliphate. The arrested accused told the police that they were in touch with “many, many persons”.

Ataullah was invited by the Muslim youth located in the adjoining districts of Nalgonda, Medak and Mahabubnagar to deliver classes on the threats that Islam faced and on the need to create a militant outfit to fight these threats. “Fund raising and bomb making are the two legs of their movement, which invariably pushes the youth into the lap of crime,” said an officer with the Telangana police.