RAMANATHAPURAM
The police here have arrested A. Sheik Dawood, 31, leader of a suspected fundamentalist group. A special police team arrested him in his hideout at Sethubava Chathiram in Thanjavur distict, the police said.
Dawood, a native of Periyapattinam near here, was brought to Kilakarai and interrogated by a police team, led by Kilakarai DSP Ravichandran, on Friday.
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Superintendent of Police Omprakash Meena said the district police came across a “fundamentalist” group in April this year. The group was active in an exclusive WhatsApp group, ‘Shahadat (martyrdom) is our goal’.
The SP said Dawood confessed to the police that he was heading the group and the members shared the common ideology of eliminating those who spoke or acted against Islam and freeing their leaders lodged in different prisons in the State with use of force. They were planning to mobilise funds through foreign connections for purchasing weapons, the SP said.
The police had arrested seven persons in the case, and three others were still at large, the SP said. Three of the accused were detained under the National Security Act (NSA) but their detention was quashed by the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court.
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The district police busted the group and arrested some of the group members in April when they arrived at Kilakarai for a secret meeting at the house of M. Mohamed Ribas, 37, a Sri Lankan Tamil, who arrived in Tamil Nadu in 2009 and engaged in fishing after buying a boat in partnership with Dawood.
A special team, which had been pursuing leads to achieve a breakthrough in the BJP office-bearer R. Veerabagu assault case, stumbled upon a fresh lead and arrested the gang members and seized deadly weapons and pamphlets from them. After forming the WhatsApp group, the members were active for nearly a year here and often held meetings, the police said.