13 of 14 detained terror suspects arrested

In a crackdown ahead of Republic Day, the NIA has arrested 13 suspected ISIS sympathisers for plotting attacks in different parts of the country.

Of the 14 suspects detained yesterday, 13 have been arrested, according to a Home Ministry spokesman.

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

Circuits for detonating explosives were recovered during the searches. The NIA said that certain incriminating articles, including but not limited to mobile phones, laptops, unaccounted cash, jihadi literature and videos and certain material for preparation of bombs were recovered from these places.

"These individuals were planning and making efforts to establish a channel of procurement of explosives/weapons, identify locations to organize training camps including training of firearms, motivate new recruits to target police officers, foreigners in India and to carry out terrorist activities in various parts of India," it said.

The NIA said it received information that certain individuals from different cities in the country were in the process of organizing themselves to commit terrorist acts in different parts of the country.

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 almost similar ideologies that of ISIS.

They said the suspects had been under surveillance for quite sometime and the decision to arrest them was taken as the group received 'instructions' for carrying out 'some sensational' attacks in the country.

The group had started receiving money through 'hawala' route and according to Home Ministry spokesman "Sheikh also received funds to the tune of Rs 6 lakh."

All the arrested suspects were being brought to the national capital for detailed interrogation as preliminary enquiry indicated that they were working on evolving a terror outfit with ideologies similar to ISIS.

Chandra Bose also said "We couldn't go through all the files as of now. But as of now, what we could go through, there are only circumstantial evidence of the air-crash but no conclusive evidence of the air crash."

"Even in one of the letters that we saw here which was written by Lal Bahadur Shastri to Suresh Bose that there is no conclusive evidence about the air crash, only few circumstantial evidence," he told PTI after the files were declassified.

Chandra Bose said "there is a change in the attitude of the government from that of the previous ones. Firstly, the attitude of suppressing the facts about Netaji has been negated. And this is the biggest thing in unraveling the truth about Netaji," Bose said.

Netaji's nephew Ardhendu Bose, who was also at the ceremony here, said "the Bose family and the entire country has been waiting for this moment for the last seven decades nearly. We feel that these files would be able to throw some light on it."

He also stressed that the files lying in KGB archives in Russia and those with Germany, UK and USA "will bring out more that what lies in those files. As we apprehend that certain files might have been destroyed."

Just ahead of the declassification ceremony, an aged family member broke down in the presence of the Prime Minister.

An official said the National Archives placed 100 files relating to Bose in public domain "after preliminary conservation treatment and digitization". On the digital copies of these files coming out in public domain meets a "long-standing public demand" which would facilitate scholars to carry out further research on Bose, the official said.

Besides the controversy over whether Subhash Bose died in the 1945 aircrash or not, those who believe he was alive after that have different theories about what happened to the leader after that.

While one of them says Bose fled to the former Soviet Union to continue to fight for India's independence but was later killed there, the other says that Netaji returned to India as an ascetic, named 'Gumnami Baba, and continued to live in Uttar Pradesh's Faizabad till 1985.

Giving details of the persons arrested by it, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) said four were from Karnataka.

While 33-year-old Syed Mujahid is a resident of Tumkur, Asif Ali alias Arman Saani (21), Suhail Ahmed alias Sohail alias Hafes Saab (23) and Muhammed Abdul Ahad alias Bade Amir alias Sulaiman (46) are from Bengaluru, it said.

Others arrested have been identified as 20-year-old Mohammad Aleem (from Lucknow), 33-year-old Mohammed Obedullah Khan alias Obaid alias Talha and 24-year-old Abu Anas, both from Hyderabad, and Mohammad Hussain Khan alias Jamil (36), resident of Mazgaon, Mumbai, the NIA said.

"The arrested accused persons will be produced before the respective local courts for obtaining transit remand," it said.