India’s premier counter-terror unit National Investigation Agency (NIA) has busted a Daesh* module in Jabalpur city of the central state of Madhya Pradesh, as per an official statement posted on its social media handle on Monday.
The NIA said that the “intelligence-led operation” was carried out with the Anti-Terror Squad (ATS) of Madhya Pradesh Police and resulted in three “highly-radicalized” people being arrested.
Overnight raids were carried out at 13 locations in Jabalpur on 26-27 May, NIA added.
Those arrested have been identified as Syed Mamoor Ali, Mohammad Adil Khan and Mohammad Shahid, as per the agency.
A case against Khan, one of the accused, was lodged last week in connection with the “pro-Daesh” activities that he had been carrying out at least since 2022.
“The NIA learnt that he and his associates were involved in disseminating ISIS propaganda through social media platforms, as well as through on-ground ‘Dawah’ (the action of converting people to Islam) programmes, in order to unleash violent terror attacks in India at the instance of Daesh,” it said.
Ali, the other arrested person, had created a Whatsapp group and a Youtube channel, and was known to be a “staunch” Daesh supporter. He was in contact with illegal arms trader to producer pistols for his module.
The arrested individuals were also in contact with some entities to procure grenades for their module in order to carry out “violent attacks in India”, the NIA said.
It said that Ali had been able to “assemble an active group of Jabalpur-based like-minded radicalized individuals”, some of who were contemplating a journey to the “conflict theatres” in other countries where Daesh has been staging attacks
Shahid, the third accused, had also created social media channels with the aim of “motivating and recruiting youth” into the Daesh.
*Daesh (also known as IS/ISIS/Islamic State) is a terrorist organization banned in Russia and other states