Madurai: Two more youths were confirmed as arrested on Tuesday by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in connection with terrorism. The very face of radicalism and terrorism has changed over the years in Madurai with the present generation leading an unassuming life at home while involving themselves in nefarious activists elsewhere.
All the five terror suspects arrested for allegedly carrying out bomb blasts in court complexes in South India not only belong to Madurai but also they plotted the attacks and sourced explosives in the city and also in Chennai, official sources revealed.
“Without indulging in any activities in Madurai, they have been actively using the social media and internet for the terror activities for the last one year,” a source said.
For instance, Mohammed Ayub Ali (25) from Island Nagar who was arrested Tuesday, had propagated radical Islamist ideas through the social media.
Having more than 1,000 followers in facebook, Ayub has consistently criticised the Prime Minister Modi in policy matters — ‘I reject Uniform Civil Code, I do not want any change in Muslim Personal Law, I want Freedom of Religion in India’. Ayub had been mentinoning “Work at Dawah — Calling to Allah,” as the profession he was carrying out since October 2000.
“The NIA had been searching for Abbas Ali for two months in connection with the Mysuru blast case. When they started gathering more information about him, they found the involvement of other members,” said an intelligence officer.
Shamsudeen (25) from Nelpatti, who was arrested Tuesday, and Dawood Suleman, who was working as a software engineer in Chennai, give regular instructions to the group and kept them intact, sources claimed. The police suspect that they would have subscribed only recently to the teachings of the self radicalised, Al-Qaeda inspired group called Base Movement.
The group had been assigned the task of converting Hindus to Islam and attracting the youths to the ideology of the movement by Abbas Ali from Isailpuram, a painter by profession. Though he was not active in social media, he used the library ‘DARUL ILM’ run by him to interact with the youths.
The inquiry with locals also revealed that they hardly interacted with neighbours. For example, Samsum Karim Raja, who runs a chicken broiler shop, was never found voluntarily chatting with people of his age group. “During Ramzan, his friends dressed identically in black kurta with a head band,” a shopkeeper revealed.
