Arrested ISIS suspects wanted to establish caliphate in India

The alleged ISIS suspects, who were arrested by the security agencies before the Republic day celebrations, wanted to topple Indian government and impose Sharia law in the country.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA), which, along with other central agencies, had arrested the suspects from different parts of the country, said that the suspects are highly radicalised and were working on procuring sophisticated arms to carry out terror strikes in the country.

Meanwhile, all the 14 terror suspects have been sent to police custody till 5 February by a special NIA court. In the remand application that the NIA filed before the court, it said that the suspects were in contact with some Iraq based active Islamic State (IS) members through voice and text based mobile apps like Trillian and Skype.

The arrests were made following searches and raids conducted at 12 locations in six cities — Bangalore, Tumkur, Mangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Lucknow on Saturday with the support of local police forces.

During the search operation, the NIA had recovered circuits for detonating explosives, incriminating articles,mobile phones, laptops, unaccounted cash, jihadi literature and videos and certain other material for preparation of bombs were recovered from these places.

According to sources, the arrested people were part of a group named Janood-ul-Khalifa-e-Hind (Army of Caliph of India), a terror group which has ideologies similar to that of IS.

NIA sources said the suspects had been under surveillance for more than three months and the decision to arrest them was taken after the group received “instructions” for carrying out some “sensational” attacks in the country.

The Home Ministry has also decided to seek information from American, German, Australian and Israeli investigative agencies regarding the suspects. It is suspected that the terror network in India may be larger.