‘ISIS is Doing More Than Waving Flags’: Probe Reveals Link Between Kashmir & Hyderabad Modules

The national investigative agency and the Delhi police, in separate investigations, have found links between the ISIS modules of Hyderabad and Kashmir.

Two Kashmiri IS operatives arrested by Delhi police earlier this month and a man from Hyderabad, who is under investigation for trying to spread ISIS ideology in India, have been in regular contact to spread the militant outfit’s footprint in India.

The suspected Islamic State in Jammu and Kashmir (ISJK) militants, Parvez (24) and Jamshid (19), who were arrested from near the Red Fort, have found to be ‘motivated’ by one Adnan Hasan.

The duo told investigators that they met Hasan in Srinagar last year and he motivated them to join ISIS. The investigation by NIA has also revealed that Hasan was indeed in Srinagar and was trying to recruit people for ISIS.

“When questioned, Adnan Hasan also accepted that he went to Srinagar on the same dates that Parvez and Jamshid mentioned. He is yet not accepting that he was radicalising the Kashmiri youths. We will seek further custody to confront the accused,” a top NIA official said.

Hasan and his two associates, Mohammed Farhan Sheikh and Azhar Ul Islam, were arrested for being involved in “a conspiracy to identify, motivate, radicalise, recruit and train Indian Muslim youth on behalf of the proscribed outfit ISIS to carry out militancy activities”, an NIA statement said.

As per investigators, the key to the link between the Hyderabad and the Kashmir modules of ISIS could be a man called Abdullah Basith.

Basith, a resident of Hyderabad, is an ‘aide’ of Adnan Hassan. Delhi police sources said that during investigations it has emerged that suspected JKIS militant Jamshid had helped Abdullah Basith with his stay in the Shaheen Nagar area of Jamia in Delhi in 2014. Basith and his associates had allegedly tried to obtain a fake passport and cross over to Bangladesh via West Bengal.

Till February this year, Jammu and Kashmir police as well as central agencies had maintained that ISIS presence in Valley was only limited to waving the Islamic State flag at funerals of militants and Friday prayers. But officials said that the latest link between the ISIS modules and JKIS is worrying.