NIA arrests two persons from Pune in ISKP case

Mukesh Ranjan
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, July 13

The anti-terror probe agency NIA said on Monday that the agency’s teams carried out searches in Pune and arrested two accused persons in connection with Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) Case, for their alleged involvement in “propagating ISIS ideology and spreading its activities” in India.

Officials in the agency said, 27-year-old Nabeel S Khatri, a resident of Khondwa in Pune and 22-year-old Sadiya Anwar Sheikh, a resident of Phulenagar area of the city were arrested following raids conducted by the NIA sleuths. The former runs a gym in Pune while Sadiya Sheikh is a 2nd year student of Mass Communications and Journalism at Baramati, they added.

A senior NIA Official said: “This case was initially registered by Delhi Police Special Cell on 8th March, 2020, after the arrest of a Kashmiri couple- Jahanzaib Sami Wani and his wife Hina Bashir Beigh from Jamia Nagar in the national capital”.

The couple was having affiliations with ISKP, which is a banned terrorist organisation and is a part of ISIS, and was found to be involved in subversive and anti-national activities. They were also found to be in touch with Abdullah Basith, who is already lodged in Tihar jail in another NIA case (ISIS Abu Dabhi module), the officials said.

Further investigations into the case revealed that accused Sadiya Sheikh was continuously in touch with Sami, Beigh and Basith on various secure messaging applications and deliberating on “as to how to propagate the ideology of ISIS and further its activities in India”, the NIA officials said, while alleging that that they were trying “to build up a cadre of ISIS in India by recruiting gullible youth for terrorist activities”.

“It has also come to light that along with Sami and Basith, accused Khatri was also actively involved in the planning to carry out violent terrorist attacks in India by arranging logistic support such as procurement of weapons, fake SIM cards, assembling of Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) etc. to further the activities of ISIS in India,” the agency said.

“It has also been revealed that Sadiya Sheikh was in contact with ISIS recruiters through social media since 2015. She was planning to execute a terrorist attack in Jammu & Kashmir and was detained by J&K Police in 2018,” the NIA said.