Terror suspects produced before NIA special court

 The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Saturday produced all the six terror suspects detained from Bengaluru, Tumakuru and Mangaluru before the special court for NIA cases. The NIA has taken the custody of all the six accused on transit warrant and will produce them in the jurisdictional court in Delhi on January 27.

The NIA on Friday had showed the arrests of only two suspects, engineering dropout Najmul Huda from Mangaluru, software professional Mohammed Afzal from Bengaluru. The arrests of remaining accused were regularised on Saturday. The other accused from the State are software engineer Mohammed Abdul Ahad alias Bade Amir alias Sulaiman (46), a resident of Thanisandra, Suhail Ahmed alias Sohal alias Hafes Saab (23), a resident of Cottonpet, Asif Ali alias Arman Saani (21), a resident of Hosaguddadahalli in JJ Nagar and Syed Mujahid (33), a fruit merchant from Tumakuru.

The accused were brought in separate vehicles to the special NIA court. The counsel appearing for the NIA filed an application seeking transit warrant. NIA court judge Muralidhar Pai remanded the accused in NIA police custody in transit warrant for four days. Sources said the NIA team will take the accused to Delhi on Monday. The accused have been booked under various sections of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) for planning terror acts. The arrests have been shown in the FIR registered by the NIA Delhi in 2015 for radicalisation of Indian youths by IS operatives.

According to sources, Mohammed Abdul Ahad was deported to India from Istanbul in Turkey when they were trying to cross over to Syria in February 2015. Abdul Ahad, who has a masters in computer science from Kennedy-Western University in California, was among nine people deported in February 2015. He was under surveillance since then and intelligence agencies found him in contact with former Indian Mujahideen operatives.  

Among the other accused, Suhail Ahmed alias Hafes Saab is a teacher at a madrasa in JJ Nagar, Hosaguddadahalli, while Asif Ali alias Arman Saani, also a resident of Hosaguddadahalli, is a stone polisher. The other accused Hussain Mujahid is a wholesale fruit merchant in Tumakuru and was picked up from his house in the wee hours of Friday. Sources said that the youths arrested were in touch with a person with an online identity  ‘Yusuf’, suspected to be Shafi Armar of coastal town Bhatkal. Sources said that Mohammed Abdul Ahad, after his return from Turkey, had been attending cleric Maulana Anzarshah Qasmi’s preachings.

Qasmi was a resident of Iliyasnagar in Bengaluru’s Banashankari 2nd Stage and was arrested by the Delhi police early this month, in connection with the ongoing probe of the accused involved with the al-Qaeda in the Indian subcontinent (AQIS).

Cops to quiz them

The City police are likely to question the four terror suspects who were picked up from Bengaluru by NIA on Friday.

“We would like to ascertain some  information about the terror module when we question them,” said a police officer.

“At present, NIA is handling the case and is interrogating the suspects. The City police will have to obtain NIA’s permission for a separate interrogation,” a top police source said. The source said interrogating the arrested persons will help gain information about their networking. “We might get some important information. So, we are not ruling out the possibility of approaching the NIA for permission ,” the source said.