Interrogation of arrested ISIS operatives has revealed that they were given special training in making IEDs.
New Delhi
Terror organisation Islamic State (ISIS) has switched to a new tactic of recruiting “roaming trainers” to make improvised explosive device (IED). The trainers shift base continuously and impart explosive-making training to sleeper cells in different states.
Questioning of arrested ISIS operatives Imran Khan and Mohd Yunus Saki, who fell into the net of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) during an investigation into the 2022 seizure of explosives in Rajasthan’s Chittorgarh district, has revealed that the duo from Ratlam in Madhya Pradesh was given special training in IED making.
After acquiring the skill to make IED, the two organised several training camps for members of the terror group’s sleeper cells in Jammu and Kashmir, Kerala and Madhya Pradesh. They also had Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Maharashtra on their radar.
NIA sources said Imran Khan was the mastermind of the IED seizure in Chittorgarh last year. The IED had been brought there to impart bomb-making training to recruits in the desert state. However, security agencies got wind of their plans and both Khan and Saki fled to Maharashtra.
Investigation into the Chittorgarh IED case led NIA to ISIS-inspired terror outfit “SUFA”. According to NIA, Saki and Imran Khan were actively engaged in spreading the ISIS ideology before their arrests from Maharashtra. NIA had earlier seized explosives and various components used in the fabrication of IEDs from the possession of the accused.
Investigations had revealed that the two men had procured the materials and substances for fabricating the IEDs to spread terror and mayhem in Rajasthan and elsewhere in India, said NIA.
The arrested duo was highly trained in IED fabrication and were also involved in training their co-accused to make such devices at the poultry farm of the mastermind, Imran Khan. The poultry farm was attached by the NIA last month.
After they fled to Mumbai and subsequently settled in Pune last year, they organised at least two IED training and fabrication workshops in Pune last year.
Meanwhile, the NIA has arrested another accused linked with the ISIS-inspired car IED bomb blast in Coimbatore in 2022. Mohammed Azarudeen alias Azar, who is already in jail in Kerala in another case, was the 13th person to be arrested in the case. He was arrested and charge-sheeted earlier in the Tamil Nadu ISIS module case and was subsequently sent to judicial custody.
In a separate case related to Uttar Pradesh, two ISIS operatives, Atif Muzaffar and Md Faisal Khan, both residents of Kanpur Nagar, were held guilty by a Lucknow Special Court of killing a retired school principal, Ram Babu Shukla, in a bid to spread fear and terror among the people and propagate ISIS agenda.
Shukla, the Kanpur-based victim who retired as principal of Swami Atmaprakash Brahmchari Junior High School in Kanpur, was killed on 24 October 2016 while he was returning home on a bicycle. He was attacked by the accused near village Pyondi in Kanpur.
The two convicts had been radicalised by the ISIS ideology and were out to kill people whom they believed to be disbelievers. A third accused, Mohammad Saifulla, had died in an exchange of fire with the Anti-Terrorist Squad, UP, on 7 March 2017.