The National Investigation agency has said that the suspected ‘Amroha-Delhi IS module’ has a Kashmir connection, reported the Indian Express.
The report said that Saqib Iftekhar — a Hapur-based muezzin under arrest for allegedly helping the group acquire weapons — is learnt to have revealed that he had travelled to Jammu and Kashmir twice in search of weapons and to meet militants.
While quoting sources the report said that Iftekhar travelled to Kashmir first in May last year. “He visited Bandipora in North Kashmir and then went Rajouri in Jammu,” an NIA officer told Indian Express.
The report further added that he had also gone to Tral to visit a ‘Maulvi’.
“He and the Maulvi are known to each other as they studied theology in an Amroha seminary together. He asked the Maulvi to arrange for weapons and to help him meet Mujahideen. The Maulvi expressed the inability to arrange for weapons but promised to help him meet Mujahideen,” the officer said.
An NIA team is now in Kashmir to identify and question the Maulvi and to ascertain if the group ever came in contact with Kashmiri militants, the report said.
NIA has so far arrested 11 people in connection with the case, with Mufti Suhail — an Islamic Preacher from Jaffarabad in Delhi — being accused of being the leader of the group.
During its raids, the NIA had claimed to have seized a huge cache of arms and explosives. NIA said that the group was “under NIA surveillance for some time following inputs of their suspicious activities”, and released photos of “large cache of arms and ammunition”.
However, netizens seem to have found the pictures very ‘Shoddy’, with ‘Diwali Patakhas’, ‘Sutli Bombs’, and a ‘Tractor Trolley Suspension’ being passed off as a rocket launcher.
Taking a dig at the images, one netizen wrote, “when you are an ISIS module but celebrate Diwali too. NIA, South Indian movies have a better script and plot than you. Please hire some script writers from there.”
“Phuski bomb recovered in UP as major terror plot was busted,” wrote another netizen on social networking site Facebook.
Pertinently, the mother of Saeed and Raees, two of the arrested, told Janta Ka Reporter that the NIA officials had seized the family’s hydraulic tractor trolly to claim that they had recovered a rocket launcher.
