In a joint operation, the NIA and Maharashtra ATS arrested one Munabeet Mushtaq Shaikh, also known as Ameer, from his Amrut Nagar residence at Mumbra in the adjoining Thane district, for his alleged links with international terror outfit Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS).
The officials of the two agencies also picked up one more person in Mumbai and were questioning till late in the evening. “We will not identify the person whom we have picked up for questioning till we have something concrete in hand that he is either sympathiser or has links with ISIS,” an investigating official said.
Within a couple of hours after the arrest of Munabeer Shaikh, the NIA and ATS officials produced him before a special court in Mumbai and sought his transit remand for three days. The NIA is taking him to New Delhi for interrogation.
Thirty-three-year-old Munabeer Shaikh, a diploma holder in computers, is currently unemployed. He used to work for a private firm at Nallasophara in Thane district and shifted his based to Mumbra some time back.
Munabeer Shaikh used to live at Mumbra with his wife Huzma, two children – aged 6 years and six months, and his father-in-law Ahmed Miya.
Informed sources said that he was on the radar of both Maharashtra ATS and NIA for the past two years.
While it is not officially confirmed, Muneer Shaikh was allegedly one of the recruiters of the ISIS in India. He had been drawn to ISIS through social media. He was being used by ISIS to indoctrinate and recruit youngsters for the terror outfit.
His name had cropped during the investigations into the four missing Muslim youths from Mumbai – two of whom returned to their homes little over a month after their disappearance from homes at Malwani in north Mumbai.
The arrest of Munabeer Shaikh is fourth such instances in Maharashtra in recent years where the ISIS has either recruited or tried to rope in Muslim youngsters into fold and use him in its terror activities.
In the first such witnessed in May last year, four youngsters — Areeb Fayyaz Majeed, Fahad Tanvir Sheikh, Aman Naim Tandel and Shaheen Farooqi Tanki — who were also engineering students — had disappeared from Kalyan in May 2014. later, news reports emerged indicating that all four of them had joined ISIS.
Of the four youngsters, Areeb returned to India. Immediately after his return, Areeb was arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA). On May 20 this year, the NIA filed a 8,000-page comprehensive charge sheet against ISIS ‘recruit’ Areeb in a special court here. In the charge-sheet, the NIA named three of his friends were named as “absconding” accused in the case.
In the second instance, the Maharashtra ATS detained and grilled intensely a 16-year-old girl from a good family in the second week of December last year after it came know that she made up her mind to join the ISIS. After grilling her, the ATS has put her under a de-radicalisation programme, with the help of her family members and community leaders.
In the third latest instance, four Muslim youths had absconded and “suspected” to have joined the international terror outfit Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). Two of them returned to their homes, while two are still absconding.
The ATS is keeping a close watch on the youngsters to ascertain if they had any links with ISIS, while it is looking out for two other missing youngsters who are suspected to have fled to Syria and joined ISIS.