As a special court on Saturday remanded ISIS ‘recruit’ Arif Majeed in the NIA’s custody till December 8 to facilitate his interrogation, the NIA is now aiming to make him reveal whether he fled from the war zone on his own or was sent by the banned terror outfit on a planned mission. Majeed has reportedly shown no remorse or guilt during his interrogation by the NIA, which will now seek to unravel if the 23-year-old was allowed to leave Iraq by the terror group with a terror plot to execute in India.
Majeed was later flown from Mumbai in a special aircraft to Delhi. He has been kept in an undisclosed safe house where top Intelligence brass of the IB and RAW will quiz him. NSA Ajit Doval, himself an ace Intelligence man, is also likely to interrogate him during the remand period and subsequently, brief Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Sources said, the interrogators are handling him patiently and showing a lot of sympathy for his plight in their bid to extract as much information as possible from him.
In its remand plea in the special NIA court, the agency told the court that they want to unearth the entire conspiracy from Majeed’s ‘recruitment’ to the role played by him in the ‘war’ (for an Islamic state). The agency also told special NIA judge PR Deshmukh that three other youths, who had joined the UN-banned terror outfit, along with Majeed have been named as accused and shown as wanted in the case. “We also want to investigate the kind of training that Majeed was imparted before joining the ISIS forces,” NIA’s prosecutor told the court.
The NIA will also seek to understand the designs of ISIS, if any, in India, inter-linkages with other terror groups like the Indian Mujahideen (IM) or SIMI besides any patronage from Pakistani agencies or subversive groups, agency sources said.
India taking the Majeed instance with utmost seriousness was evident at the annual conference of police chiefs being held in Guwahati with Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh and IB chief Syed Asif Ibrahim red-flagging concerns over youths getting attracted to the terror outfit and terming the return of battle-hardened jehadis to the country as a new challenge to the security agencies.
Singh expressed concern over growing use of cyberspace by anti-national forces and said that steps should be taken to monitor cyberspace. “We have to check all these forces with our might,” Singh emphasised. It is against this backdrop that the Centre is strategising ways to deradicalise the youth, especially the educated and upwardly mobile, and check the proliferation of jehadi materials through the Internet which is also a storehouse of information on arms training, explosives handling and recruitment.
Singh also blamed “state actors” like ISI in Pakistan for attempts to destabilise India even as the Centre is strategising ways to deradicalise the youth, especially the educated ones, and check the proliferation of jehadi materials through the Internet. “If non-state actors are involved in terrorist acts in India, then is ISI a non-state actorIJ” he asked.
Singh highlighted the failed attempt by the South Asia wing of the al-Qaeda to hijack a frigate of the Pakistan Navy and said the terror group was planning to target American and Indian Naval ships through the Pakistan Naval vessel if they could hijack it.
“What is of more concern for us is that some of the Pakistan Navy personnel were also involved in it. We should prepare ourselves to meet this challenge and I am sure victory will be ours. Their evil designs will never get fulfilled in India,” he said, while underscoring the nexus between the terror groups and the Pakistani state agencies.
He described as a threat al-Qaeda’s declaration to form a wing — Qaeda-ul-Jehad — for the Indian sub-continent, and said the global terror group’s intention was to bring Bangladesh, Assam, Gujarat, Jammu & Kashmir and some other parts of the country under its grip, which the country would not allow to happen.
Singh asserted many foreign terrorist groups think that since a large number of Muslims live in India, they can recruit many of them in their fold and fight for creation of an Islamic country. “But Indian Muslims are patriotic. Indian Muslims are always ready to fight for the security and sovereignty of the country. And that is why such terrorist groups will not succeed,” he said.
Ibrahim said while Pak-based terror groups lashkar-e-Tayyeba (leT) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) are a constant security threat, “Indian Mujahideen has created terror modules. This has been compounded by the recent developments in Syria and Iraq”.