NIA raids 16 locations in Bantwal, Belthangady and Uppinangady in PFI terror funding case

MANGALURU, BENGALURU: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Wednesday conducted raids at 16 locations, including houses, offices and a hospital in Bantwal, Belthangady, Uppinangady and Venoor in connection with the alleged plot to target Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rallies.

It is learnt that the NIA has taken four people into custody from Puttur after raids on four places at Koornadka, Taripadbu and Kumbra. In Belthangady taluk, the agency raided the house of Badruddin in Perinje, who owns a tiles shop in Patttadi.

In Bantwal taluk, the agency raided the properties of Ijaz Ahmed Narikombu and Abubacker Siddique Kolnadu at Goltamajalu village. Raids were also conducted on Zakir Sajipa Nadu, Abdul Mubarak Bollaiyi, M D Ujalaip Mani, Mohammed Rameez Nehru, Ashfaq Goltamajalu and Zubair Neralakatte.

Several houses were raided by the NIA.

The central agency is on the trail of hawala money from Gulf nations pumped into the now banned Popular Front of India (PFI). The terror funding came to light while investigating the Phulwarisharif case in Bihar in July last year. According to the NIA, terror elements were plotting to target Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rallies and create communal discord.

The NIA had recently conducted raids in Bantwal and Puttur in connection with the case and arrested Mohammed Sinan of Bantwal, Sarfaraz Nawaz and Iqbal of Sajipa and Abdul Rafiq of Puttur. They had also arrested Abid K M of Kunjathur in Kerala and seized digital evidence of huge transactions running into crores.

The NIA had earlier arrested Mohammed Arif from Nagawara in Bengaluru.

The NIA, which had earlier arrested Mohammed Arif from Nagawara in Bengaluru, has found out that he was part of a Telegram group, ‘Rising Islam’, to raise funds for terror activities and recruitment and young recruits were being sent to Pakistan and Afghanistan for training. According to the NIA, apart from two banned organisations, the group had handlers from the Al Qaeda and Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). The funds raised were being sent for the terror activities of the two groups.

The raids were still under way at the premises of suspects linked to the conspiracy which pertains to the involvement of PFI and its leaders and cadres in violent and unlawful activities, who had assembled for that purpose in the Phulwarisharif area of Patna.

Earlier, six persons were arrested and several incriminating articles and documents related to PFI were seized in the case which was initially registered on July 12 last year at Phulwarisharif police station in Bihar’s Patna district and re-registered by the NIA on July 22 last year.

On February 4-5 this year, the NIA also searched eight locations in Bihar’s Motihari and arrested two people who had arranged weapons and ammunition to carry out the killing. Those arrested were identified as Tanveer Raza alias Barkati and Md Abid alias Aryan.

The NIA then said that recce had already been conducted to execute a target and that the arms and ammunition had been handed over to a PFI trainer, Yakoob, who had been conducting training sessions for PFI cadres.

A few days back, Yakoob, the PFI trainer, had posted a derogatory and inflammatory Facebook video post, which was aimed at disturbing peace and communal harmony, the agency said.

“Other users of Facebook had commented and trolled this post abusively. The absconding accused Yakoob and two arrested accused had identified some of them and had conspired to execute the killing of the targeted person”, the NIA had said earlier.

With the earlier arrests, the NIA had said a PFI module planning targeted killing and disrupting communal harmony has been unearthed and busted. (With Agency inputs)