The Union Home Ministry on Sunday told the Lok Sabha that "a United Nations report which suggested presence of "significant numbers" of ISIS terrorists in Kerala and Karnataka are "factually not correct".
Minister of State for Home G Kishan Reddy was giving a written reply to a question on whether the Government is aware of the United Nations report titled 'The 26th report of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team concerning ISIS, Al-Qaeda and associated individuals and entities' stating that there are "significant numbers" of ISIS terrorists in Kerala and Karnataka.
The Minister refuted the report and gave the statistics of the cases registered by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in this regard.
"The said report claiming presence of "significant numbers" of ISIS terrorists in Kerala and Karnataka, is factually not correct. The Government continuously takes necessary measures to put forth India's correct position through established mechanism in unequivocal and categorical terms at various international, multilateral and bilateral for a and also through diplomatic channels, the Minister said.
Reddy also said 34 cases related to presence of Islamic State (IS) and 20 cases related to presence of Lashkar-e-Toiba across the country were registered by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and 240 people were arrested in this connection. "The Government is aware of the presence of the terrorist outfits in the country including ISIS, Daesh, IS Khorasan, Lashkar-e-Toiba, etc. The NIA has so far registered and investigated 34 cases related to presence of Islamic State (IS) and 20 cases related to presence of Lashkar-e-Toiba across the country and arrested 160 and 80 accused persons respectively," he said.