In its efforts to clamp down on the Islamic State (IS) module in India, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Friday arrested an operative of the banned organisation from Karnataka in connection with the Kerala ISIS module case.
Jufri Jawhar Damudi, an IS operative wanted in the case has been arrested from Bhatkal by NIA.
Jufri, a resident of Bhatkal in Uttar Kannada district of Karnataka, was arrested in a joint operation of NIA and Karnataka Police.
Jufri was in touch with ISIS leadership currently operating out of the Afghanistan-Pakistan region who provided him propaganda material and also gave directions for its dissemination, the NIA said.
For this purpose, the agency said Jufri had created multiple pseudonymous identities on encrypted chat platforms and was also a member of various online propaganda channels of ISIS.
The case was registered on June 29 this year at the NIA police station here in the National Capital in connection with the conspiracy of the proscribed terrorist organization ISIS to radicalize and recruit impressionable Muslim youth in India to wage violent jihad against the Indian State, the agency said.
"ISIS terrorists operating from various conflict zones along with ISIS cadres in India have created a network by assuming pseudo-online identities wherein ISIS-related propaganda material is disseminated for radicalizing and recruiting members to the fold of ISIS," said the NIA.
Earlier, NIA had conducted multiple searches in Jammu and Kashmir on July 11 this year and arrested three accused persons namely Umar Nisar, Tanveer Ahmad Bhat and Rameez Ahmad Lone, all residents of Achabal in Anantnag.
"A cyber entity 'Abu Hazir Al Badri' a key operative of ISIS who is involved in translation of Voice of Hind to South Indian languages and its further dissemination was identified as Jufri Jawhar Damudi."
This cyber id was also used to radicalize and recruit people, said the NIA, adding Jawhar is the younger brother of Adnan Hasan Damudi who was arrested for ISIS-related activities in 2016 and is currently under detention in a separate NIA case.
During the searches conducted today, the anti-terror agency said, a large number of digital devices such as mobile phones, hard disks, SD cards, etc have been seized.
( With inputs from ANI )
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