New Delhi, May 25 (IANS): The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Wednesday conducted searches at two locations in Uttar Pradesh in the Bhopal terror funding case involving the proscribed organisation, JMB (Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen, Bangladesh).
According to an NIA official, the raids were aimed at exposing further links and conspiracies of the arrested accused and the charge-sheet filed in the matter before a special NIA court in Bhopal.
"Six of the arrested accused are Bangladeshi nationals and are active JMB cadres. They had entered India illegally, without any valid documents, and acquired forged Indian identity documents with the help of their sympathisers. Wednesday's searches on the premises of various suspects led to the seizure of several digital devices (mobile phones), SIM cards, Bank Passbooks and Identity documents. The documents, currently under examination, relate to suspect transactions related to transfer of funds by the accused," said the official.
The NIA investigations have revealed that all the ten arrested accused were involved in influencing, radicalising and motivating vulnerable Indian Muslim youth to take up violent Jihad against the democratic system of governance in the country. They had been circulating incriminating Jihadi literature, inflammatory videos and statements (Bayans,) and endorsing, justifying and glorifying the terrorist acts of the various banned terrorist organisations, including JMB, Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
"They were conspiring to align with terrorist organisations to achieve their ultimate goal of establishing a Sharia based Islamic rule in India through pursuit of 'violent Jihad'. They had grand plans of creating a pan-India network to pursue their objective and, along with their co-accused, had successfully established bases in various states, including Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Tripura, West Bengal and Assam," said the official.
Initially, the case was lodged on March 14, 2022 at PS STF, Bhopal and later on the probe of the matter was taken over by the NIA on April 5, 2022.
The local police had arrested six active cadres of JMB from their rented house in Bhopal. A cache of Jihadi literature, digital devices, printer, paper cutting machine, book binding material were also seized from the house.