Chennai: Four alleged sympathisers of the ISIS were quizzed by sleuths from the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in a city hotel on Thursday. The questioning came close on the heels of the busting of a suspected IS module in the southern states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala plotting to carry out terror attacks. Sources said the NIA had issued summons to the four men to appear for interrogation since their names had figured in a list of suspected radicals.
The investigation was conducted at a hotel in Periamet and the NIA officials refused to comment on the developments. Three of them are in their mid-20’s. One of the four men questioned identified himself as martial arts trainer Sadiq Badshah Tura Bhi (33). He claimed that the rest of those being questioned are his students and that the NIA sleuths were forcing a confession from them as if they were being influenced by him to join the IS module.
Sadiq disclosed that he had been questioned earlier by NIA, the TN Police and Puducherry police on a number of occasions since 2011. He was recently enlarged on conditional bail in a case in the neighbouring Union Territory, Puducherry. In the course of the week, six men had been picked up by the NIA's Kochi unit in Kannur and another was taken in for questioning from Tirunelveli. All seven were subsequently remanded to judicial custody. However, seven men questioned in Coimbatore were let off by NIA sleuths.
