A day after six men, reportedly part of an Islamic State-inspired group, were arrested from Kerala, a senior Home Ministry official said the arrival of their suspected ring leader, Manseed, alias Omar al Hindi (30), from Qatar four days ago was the trigger for the arrests though the group had been under the radar for four months now.
The accused, radicalised online, had formed Ansar-ul-Khilafah Kerala (soldiers of the Caliphate as propagated by IS) on Telegram — a web based application platform, a senior Home Ministry official told The Hindu .
One of the accused, Jasim N.K. (24) — an engineer and the only one with an active Facebook account — was following Islamic preacher Zakir Naik and had posted several messages against killings in Syria by the Assad regime and about children and women killed in Palestine.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA), which made the arrests on Sunday, said the accused were inspired by the IS and had assembled on a hilltop near Kannur to plan blasts and attacks against key politicians in Kerala and Tamil Nadu when they were apprehended. However, no explosives were found on them, the official said.
The accused first met through Facebook and later on moved to Telegram to avoid detection by security agencies, an NIA official said.
The accused had been on the radar of the security agencies for the past four months.
“We had been tracking the group for few months and then Manseed reached Kerala from Qatar four days back. We decided to keep them under watch but then they assembled on a hilltop in Kannur, we suspected that they might carry out some attack immediately, so they were apprehended,” said the official.
“We are going through their social media accounts and have confiscated their phones and other electronic devices. They were radicalised online gradually and were brought together by Manseed,” the official said.
The NIA was probing id Manseed was getting directions from someone else.
