Karate teacher from Nizamabad arrested for training Muslim youngsters in rioting

The Telangana police arrested a karate instructor, a 52-year-old man named Abdul Khader, who was found to be training Muslim youth from the two Telugu states for violent anti-social activities, including stone pelting, rioting and killing.

The arrest comes at a time when the nation was still reeling from the beheading of a tailor in Udaipur for purportedly supporting BJP leader Nupur Sharma's comments about Prophet Mohammad.

A resident of Autonagar in north Telangana’s Nizamabad, Khader is associated with the controversial organisation Popular Front of India (PFI). The police also seized from his home—from where suspicious activities were reported—PFI banners, bamboo batons, nun-chucks, stationery, reading material and books, audio system, and several bus and train tickets. The books were anti-India and anti-Hindu activities. There have been previous arrests of PFI activists from Nizamabad.

Khader lured young Muslim men of poor families from various districts of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. He would then enrol them in intense physical training to mould them into religious fighters.

“According to what he revealed, the aim was to create hardcore Islamic fundamentalists and keep them ready for anti-social activities, violent acts on people of other faiths to create unrest in the country. They were taught about how a person can be easily killed with a knife or with a baton etc,” A Venkateshwar, Nizamabad’s Assistant Commissioner of Police, told DH.

In addition to physical training, the youngsters were also provided legal knowledge, the ACP said.

Venkateshwar, who is also the investigating officer in the case, said that Khader’s such camps were three days- to one-week long, in which Muslim youngsters, and PFI activists from across Telangana as well as Andhra Pradesh’s far-off districts such as Kurnool and Nellore also participated.

The police suspected that the training modules were operational for at least a year now; they feared more than 200 young men could have been radicalised already. “From the information gathered from Khader, we are searching for his associates and those trained by him,” the police said.

Khader was booked under sections 120A and 120B (criminal conspiracy), and 153A (promoting religious enmity) of the Indian Penal Code, and section 13 (1) (b) of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967. He was later sent to 14-day judicial custody.

The district police is on alert after the intent of terror activities were revealed, the police said. Banned in states such as Jharkhand, PFI is seen as the successor to the outlawed Students’ Islamic Movement of India.