New Delhi: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Thursday seized several incriminating documents, electronic devices including mobile phones, pen drives, CDs, hard disks etc following a pan-India search conducted in connection with online radicalisation process of the Pakistan based terrorist organisations, an official said.
The searches were carried out at multiple locations in Assam, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Jammu & Kashmir, Rajasthan and Gujarat. "The NIA conducted searches at 19 locations in 8 states across the country in a Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) terror conspiracy case,” an official said.
It is understood that the searches, relating to the case RC-13/2024/NIA/DLI, were conducted at the premises of suspects/close aides of an accused Sheikh Sultan Salah Uddin Ayubi alias Ayubi, a Jaish-e-Mohammad operative who was arrested from Assam’s Goalpara district on account of his incriminatory role in the case.
Ayubi was taken into custody in October this year for disseminating propaganda material associated with JeM, and radicalising and recruiting youth into the Jamaat outfit inspired by JeM.
The locations at which the searches were conducted today were Goalpara (Assam), Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Mumbai, Amravati (Maharashtra), Jhansi, Bareilly, Deoband, Saharanpur (Uttar Pradesh), Sitamarhi (Bihar), Hooghly (West Bengal), Baramulla, Reasi, Budgam, Anantnag (Jammu & Kashmir), Dungarpur (Rajasthan), and Mehsana (Gujarat). The Home Ministry on Wednesday expressed serious concern over the online radicalisation process of the Pakistan based terrorist organisation.
"The use of more secure messaging application like Signal, Telegram, Viber and dark Web apart from WhatsApp with end-to-end encryption by radical elements to connect with other like minded elements has proved to be a major challenge for security agencies in its efforts to counter radicalized individuals online,” Minister of State for Home Nityanand Rai has said in the Rajya Sabha.
In fact, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has also issued directions for blocking of 9845 URLs (which also include radical content) till October this year.
Currently, apart from State Police, NIA is investigating 67 cases relating to online radicalisation. In these cases, 325 accused have been arrested, 336 accused have been charge-sheeted and 63 accused have been convicted so far.
Read More
