NIA cracks down on suspected ISIS members in Kerala's Kasaragod
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on April 28 conducted raids on the houses of three people in Kasaragod district in Kerala in connection with the serial bomb blasts in Sri Lanka on April 21. The three had reported links to an Islamic State operative from the state.
The Kerala police found that the suspects had avidly followed Zahran Hashim, the main attacker in Sri Lankan, on social media.
The officials have not booked anyone but investigation agencies like the NIA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the US are tracking down Hashim’s social media accounts, allegedly used to recruit people for his National Towheed Jamaat (NJT), a pro-Jihadi organisation.
As per reports, a number of impressionable youngsters from the country, especially from Kerala and Kashmir, were leaving for West Asia where the ISIS had a considerable presence.
Intelligence agencies were on alert as they had found in 2017 that Kerala had become a hub of ISIS recruitment, after Jammu and Kashmir.
In May 2016 alone, 21 people, including women and children from different districts of Kerala, travelled to Syria to join the ISIS. A group of Keralites were reported missing under suspicious circumstances from a West Asian country between December 2016 and January 2017. Many of them were reportedly killed in air raids by the US-led coalition fighting the ISIS.
In 2018, intelligence agencies said ISIS middlemen had connections with religious centres in at least two northern and one southern district of Kerala. They used the religious centres to recruit youth. The recruits would then be transported to countries like Syria and Yemen. As per reports, till 2018, around 90 Keralites had been associated with the ISIS. Of this, 28 were from Kasaragod and 38 from Kannur and 12 from Bahrain. At least 16 of them were killed in air raids since 2016.
In 2016, the NIA had revealed that the Keralite youths who were arrested for their alleged ISIS links communicated with one another using an encrypted email app called Tutanota. The same year, the NIA also confirmed that around ten youngsters had returned to Kerala after undergoing combat training in Jihadist camps in Iraq and Syria.
Intelligence agencies and the police were on a stakeout in Kerala after reports emerged that Sri Lanka attacker Zahran Hashim had forged ISIS links when he was in Kerala. Unconfirmed reports also said the attackers, led by Zahran Hashim, were in Tamil Nadu ahead of the attacks. However, this information could not be verified.
