NIA searches 17 locations across 7 states in Bengaluru prison radicalisation case

Mangalore Today News Network

New Delhi, Mar 05, 2024: Multiple teams of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Tuesday searched 17 locations in seven states in connection with a case related to the radicalisation of prisoners by a Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) terrorist in a Bengaluru prison.

 

“Raids are being carried out at 17 locations in seven states on Tuesday,” an NIA spokesperson said.

The searches come at a time when the Bengaluru police are yet to make any arrest in the Rameshwaram Cafe blast in which nine people were injured on March 1. The NIA, which has now taken up the case, visited the spot on Tuesday.

The Bengaluru city police had originally registered the case in connection with radicalisation in prisons on the basis of inputs from central agencies and indicated that jails, where people hardened by long sentences in terrorism cases are lodged, were being used to radicalise new criminals to take up crime in the name of religion.

Later, the Bengaluru Central Crime Branch (CCB) police arrested five youths with a history of crime for alleged possession of seven country-made pistols and 45 live bullets, and for allegedly planning some form of terror attack.

Named along with the five youths was Tadiyandavede Nasir, 46, a Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT)-linked prisoner from Kerala lodged in Bengaluru Central Prison. Under trial in the 2008 serial blasts in Bengaluru, Nasir was arrested in 2009 and is among the 18 Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI, now banned) activists convicted for seven years in 2018 by an NIA court in Kerala for being part of a terror training camp in the state’s Vagamon in 2007.

Nasir, who has been in prison for over 13 years, radicalised a few members of a group of 20 youths who were lodged in Bengaluru Central Prison between 2018 and 2019 over an attempt to murder a businessman in north Bengaluru in October 2017.

The NIA, in its chargesheet filed in January this year, said Naseer had managed to get prisoners in the jail shifted to his barrack after carefully assessing whether they could be radicalised and recruited into the LeT. He first managed to radicalise and recruit Junaid Ahmed and Salman Khan and, thereafter, he conspired with Junaid to radicalise and recruit the other accused in which case.

The NIA alleged that Junaid Ahmed, after his release from jail, began sending funds to his co-accused from abroad to promote LeT activities within and outside the prison. He also conspired with Salman to deliver arms, ammunition, hand grenades and walkie-talkies to the others as part of a plot to carry out a ‘fidayeen (suicide)’ attack and help Naseer escape from police custody en route to court. Junaid also instructed his co-accused to steal police caps for the attack and commit arson on government buses as a practice run. The plot was foiled with the seizure of the arms in July last year.

The charge of alleged radicalisation of youths in prisons by people incarcerated for long terms in terrorism cases has been seen in a few recent cases in Karnataka. In March 2023, a special court convicted two terror case prisoners, Mohammed Fahad and Afsar Pasha, for unlawful activities over their indoctrination in the Bengaluru prison in 2012 by Abdul Rehman, an accused in a criminal case. The NIA took over the case in October last year and had conducted searches then.

Courtesy: Indian Express