india

Updated: May 09, 2019 08:44 IST

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has decided to confront Riyas Aboobacker, arrested last week in connection with Islamic State’s Kasargod module, with members of the Coimbatore module of the terror outfit, said two officials with knowledge of the probe.

It was the Coimbatore module, busted in September 2018, through which Indian agencies got a clue that Maulvi Zahran bin Hashim, a Sri Lanka-based radical Islamic preacher, was preparing for major attacks and accordingly, alerted authorities in that country. Over 250 people were killed when suicide bombers, including Hashim, blew themselves up in several cities in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday. Aboobacker, currently in NIA custody, has revealed that he had come to know about Hashim a few years ago through a person in Coimbatore and started following the preacher, according to an official.

Abdul Rashid Abdulla, the leader of the Kasargod module of IS, of which 22 people, including women and children had travelled to Afghanistan, had also convinced him to follow the speeches of Hashim, said one of the NIA officials cited above.

NIA suspects Aboobacker was in touch with some members of the Coimbatore module. IS suspects of that module too had said they were inspired by Hashim’s speeches, said the official.

“It all seems connected. First, Aboobacker, a member of Kerala’s Kasargod module, was in touch with Coimbatore module. Then, Zahran, through his videos, exhorted Muslim youth from Sri Lanka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala to come together and establish an Islamic rule here. And subsequently, Aboobacker was preparing to carry out bombings in Kerala. We need to confront him with common suspects to connect the dots,” said a second official.

Aboobacker also took regular instructions from Abdulla, who is believed to be operating from a third country, most likely Afghanistan, according to an Intelligence Bureau official.