New Delhi: It was the government’s pre-emptive move to shut down Internet services in Kashmir that forced the husband and wife duo belonging to the Islamic State Khorasan (ISK), who were arrested on Sunday, to relocate to Delhi from Kashmir so that they could continue to execute their hiring plans for the terror group.
“The husband Jahanzaib Sami and his wife Hina Bashir Beigh moved down from Kashmir to take up accommodation in Delhi’s Okhla area after the government closed down the Internet services anticipating trouble due to the abrogation of Article 370 on August 5, 2019,” an intelligence services source told ETV Bharat on condition of anonymity.
“The husband is an IT professional who studied in Bengaluru and could communicate with possible recruits for ISK from south India.”
Abrogation of Article 370 withdrew the special status accorded to the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir. The August 5, 2019 move also divided the state into two Union territories—one for Jammu and Kashmir and another one for Ladakh.
Earlier too, an IT professional hailing from India’s Punjab had left his job to join the ISK in Afghanistan. According to his wife, her husband had since passed away.
Intelligence officials claimed that the duo was planning to stage spectacular bombings in India at the same scale as the Colombo bombings of April 21, 2019. The bombings on three churches and three hotels killed at least 258 people, wounding at least 500.
“The lines of communication were first opened by Hina who would exhort the youth to join ISK before introducing them to Sami. These chats would take place mostly through Teema apps,” a source said on condition of anonymity.
It was the Intelligence Bureau (IB) that first took notice of the couple’s Internet conversations and activity. After arming itself with irrefutable evidence after extensive surveillance and investigations, the IB handed over the case to Delhi Police’s Special Cell that made the arrests.
Many of the couple’s Internet conversations and activity related to the procurement of an explosive chemical called triacetone triperoxide, or TATP, a favourite of IS terrorists who have used it to devastating effect in Colombo (2019) and elsewhere. Because of its explosive potency, TATP is also called the ‘Mother of Satan’.
According to the police, Sami has accepted that he had travelled to Dubai but has refused to admit that he had ever been to Pakistan’s Neelam Valley where he was traced to. Sami had first joined the Al Qaida before leaving it to join the ISK.
ISK was set up in Afghanistan on January 10, 2015, and had expanded quite rapidly in the insurgency-hit country since then. In order to increase focus and to underline the significance it attaches to spreading in India and Pakistan, on May 10, 2019 and May 15, 2019, the ISK set up the ‘Wilayat al-Hind’ and ‘Wilayat Pakistan’ respectively.
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