In a major crackdown on the ISIS module in Pune, Mohammed Shahnawaz Shafiuzzama Alam alias Abdulla, the mastermind of the terror module in the city, was arrested on Saturday.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) had earlier this month announced a cash reward of Rs 3 lakh each for information about four wanted accused persons in the ISIS Pune module case, one of whom was Shahnawaz.
A few individuals were previously arrested for alleged active involvement in promoting activities of the terrorist organisation ISIS as part of a module based in Pune in Maharashtra. The NIA had carried out raids in connection with the Pune ISIS module case and seized a host of incriminating material exposing the banned terrorist organisation’s conspiracy to disrupt peace and communal harmony in the country.
The NIA had, in August, arrested one Shamil Saquib Nachan in the case and claimed it had seized incriminating material from his residence in Thane district and that the material exposed his conspiracy and of the other accused to spread terror and cause disruption in the country.
As per the agency, Nachan had been working with five other arrested accused, along with some other suspects, as part of a bigger conspiracy to trigger violence across the country on a scale larger than the 26/11 attacks, by fabricating and setting off improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The NIA had said the accused were all members of the ISIS sleeper module.
As per preliminary probe, Nachan and the other accused had assembled IEDs in a house in Kondhwa in Pune where they had also organised and participated in a bomb (IED) assembly and training workshop last year.
They had plans to wage a war against the Government of India in furtherance of the ISIS agenda to spread terror and violence with the goal of establishing an Islamic State in the country, the NIA had said.
News18 had earlier reported that not just the ISIS, but the Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and the Indian Mujahideen (IM), too, were involved in the Pune terror module, indicating regrouping under one umbrella.
According to sources, direct links had emerged between the terror modules unearthed in Hazaribagh, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra. “They all lead to Saqib Nachan, who served a 10-year sentence for his role in the 2002-03 triple blasts in Mumbai,” a source said.
Sources had then told News18 that Shahanawaz Alam is the key player in the terror plan. “All old terror outfits that were almost dead in terms of activities have been recycled again. They have done everything cleverly and saved themselves from the agencies. It is good that they were caught, otherwise their plans were deadly,” the source added.
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