ATS Busts ISKP Module; Woman Among Four Held

On Saturday, the police in the state of Gujarat said that they had seized an ISIS unit in Khorasan Province and detained three men and a woman in operations carried out in Porbandar and Surat. The men hail from Srinagar in Jammu and Kashmir.

Acting on a tip-off, the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) has arrested three men from Porbandar and a woman from Surat city and confiscated “incriminating” materials from them showing their association with the banned terrorist organisation, Director General of Police (DGP) Vikas Sahi said.

Sahi said a First Media Report (FIR) has been registered against the four under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and efforts are underway to arrest a wanted suspect in this regard.

ISKP is a transnational Salafi-jihadi organization, a designated terrorist organization by the United Nations.

“The three men were planning to use a fishing boat from Porbandar to cross the ILM and reach Afghanistan via Iran and join ISKP,” Sahi told reporters.

Shah said they were arrested from Porbandar on Friday morning and identified as Abdul Nasir Mir, Hanan Hayat Chol and Mohammad Hajim Shah, all residents of Srinagar.

During initial interrogation, they reveal that they were trained and radicalized by a therapist named Abu Hamza.

They also told ATS that two other people, Zuber Ahmed Munshi from Srinagar and Somrabanu Hanif Malik from Surat, were also members of and associated with the ISKP unit.

“Based on the information, Gujarat ATS branch and Surat crime branch raided Soumaira Malik’s house and seized several extremist publications like ‘Voice of Khorasan’ from there.

Sumaira revealed that she was in contact with her therapist and had a close relationship with Zuber.

The PSD said that several documents related to their personal identities and items used for digital communications such as mobile phones, tablets and sharp weapons were recovered from three detainees from Porbandar.

When the defendants’ cloud storage was accessed, their photos with the ISKP banner, videos of a leader giving them a pledge of allegiance, audio clips of their leader and other incriminating files were recovered, the ATS said in a statement.

The daily said the three were instructed by their handler Abu Hamza to reach Porbandar and join a fishing boat as fishermen and use the boat captain to reach the specified GPS coordinates.

The police said that they were to be taken from there to Iran on a dhow, provided with fake passports for Afghanistan and reach Khorasan via Herat.

Police said efforts are underway to arrest the accused, Zuber Ahmed Manshi.

Minister of State for Home Affairs Harsh Sanghavi praised the ATS and Surat crime branch for the operation and said the government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah was committed to a zero-tolerance policy against terrorism.

“It is a great success for the Gujarat Police. The whole matter will be investigated thoroughly,” he said.

(This story was not edited by the News18 staff and was published from a syndicated news agency feed – PTI)