The arrested suspects revealed about the ISIS’s plans to recruit local youth from Indian Mujahideen and SIMI for spreading its terror network across India.
For establishing its foothold across India the ISIS is planning to recruit the members of Indian Mujahideen and SIMI, highly placed intelligence sources said. The NIA along with state police officials had earlier arrested 14 ISIS sympathisers across the country. According to the agency these suspects were under surveillance for some time. The arrested suspects revealed about the ISIS’s plans to recruit local youth from Indian Mujahideen and SIMI for spreading its terror network across India. They have plans to obtain huge amount of weapons to carry out terror activities across the country.
ISIS is also radicalising youth towards joining terror activities through online medium. For achieving this objective, the terror outfit is hiring Indian hackers who can pass sensitive information about Indian government to them. They are actively using social media to lure youth towards terrorism. The terror group is willing to shell out as much as $60,000 for every government information which is passed on to them.
Those inspired by the IS ideology were hooked by Yusuf-al-Hind who, the Indian security agencies believe, is former Indian Mujaheedin (IM) member Shafi Armar, a resident of Bhatkal in Karnataka. Armar, now believed to be in the Islamic State-held area along the border of Iraq and Syria, formed ‘Janood-ul-Khalifa-e-Hind’ and recruited Mumbai-based 33-year-old Mudabbir Mushtaq Shaikh as ‘Amir’ (chief) of the group.
“Apart from former IM and SIMI members, Armar chose those who are basically inspired by the IS ideology. He first recruited his close aides and then inspired them to recruit more supporters,” an official said on the condition of anonymity”
“They used social networking sites and made calls through the internet (using VoIP – Voice over Internet Protocol) to activate the sleeper cells of IM and SIMI,” the official said
Another intelligence sources said that the outfit members were instructed to carry out terror attacks in Hyderabad in Telangana, Bengaluru, Mangalore and Tumkur in Karnataka, Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, and Aurangabad and Mumbai in Maharashtra.
“They were asked to organise training camps — like how to use fire arms — before the attack. They were also trying to establish channels for procuring explosives and weapons,” the official source said.
“The leadership of Janood-ul-Khalifa-e-Hind, active since April 2015, was following the IM and SIMI set-ups by choosing their organised central, state and city level core groups, the official said.
The 14 men, allegedly influenced by IS and arrested by the NIA, are also said to have revealed that the 20-year-old Uttar Pradesh-based Mohammed Aleem was chosen as Naib Amir, the second-in-command of the group after Mudabbir.
The Al-Qaeda too had planned to expand terror activities across India in 2014. They were keen to hire youth from SIMI and Indian Mujahideen to strengthen the outfit in the country. However their plan failed to click as some members of the terror group was arrested.
On the other hand, Home Minister Rajnath Singh said the security agencies were capable of dealing with any threat posed by the terror group.
“We have the capacity to meet any threat. We will face it,” he said.
The Home Minister’s comments came when asked about the ISIS threat in the country. According to Indian intelligence agencies, a total of 23 Indians have so far joined the ISIS of which six were reportedly killed in different incidents in Iraq-Syria.
