Kozhikode: Sleuths of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Sunday raided homes of two persons in Kasargod and one in Palakkad for suspected links with IS and detained Riyas, 29, from Kollengode, Palakkad.
The NIA officials who raided the houses of the two persons in Kasargod directed them to report at its office in Kochi on Monday. It is understood that under the shadow of suspicion are Ahammed Arafat of Kaliyangad and Aboobacker Siddique of Nayanmarmoola. They, however, took Riyas to their office in Kochi after raiding his house.
An NIA release said the raids were part of the investigation in ‘IS Kasaragod module case’ and the three persons are “suspected to have links with some of the accused persons in the said case who had exited India to join the proscribed terrorist organisation IS/ Daish.”
During the searches, it said, a number of digital devices including mobile phones, SIM cards, memory cards, pen drives, diaries with handwritten notes in Arabic and Malayalam, DVDs of Dr. Zakir Naik besides untitled DVDs, CDs with religious speeches, books of Dr Zakir Naik and Syed Kutheb have been seized from their residences. Digital devices will be forensically examined and analysed, it said.
Since the Sri Lankan blasts, the duo was under the close watch of NIA.
They sought police escort to take Riyas into custody in the wee hours. They are looking into the possibility of the modules in Kerala Sri Lanka associating. The three have suspected links with the accused in a case reported in 2016 in which 14 from Kasargod left for Afghanistan and Syria, where they had allegedly joined the IS.
