NIA picks up law student over IS links

More alarming details have started emerging regarding the background of the arrested accused, sources said. NIA officials suspect that some of the gang members had already attended radicalisation programmes in the war-torn Syria and later shifted to Qatar. The module is also said to have planned a series of strikes in many parts of south India. 

Now, NIA is now collecting details regarding people who have been missing from different districts of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, in order to rule out their association with ISIS. 

Meanwhile, NIA is continuing their searches and interrogation of suspects in various parts of Tamil Nadu and Kerala. However, the internal security branch of Tamil Nadu police, which deals with cases of extremism, have been kept in the dark regarding the developments. NIA had only requested the assistance of local police when they carried out searches in the residences where the suspects earlier lived in Chennai. 

“The details have been kept very confidential as more persons from Chennai and Coimbatore are suspected to have been involved. More arrests will be happening in the coming days,” an official said.

Meanwhile, Hindu Munnani has criticised the state intelligence agencies and the police for their inability to monitor extremists. Its state president Kadeswara C Subramaniam said that in recent arrests of extremists attached to the ISIS or Maoists in Tamil Nadu were done by the central agencies or police from other states. 

“We have been warning the state government about the presence of ISIS sympathisers in Coimbatore, Tirupur and Dindigul over the last few years. It is high time the government has the right people in the intelligence units,” he told reporters on Tuesday. 

He spoke to media persons after visiting their party functionary N Anandha Kumar of Podanur in Coimbatore who attempted self-immolation fearing arrest by the police.