Family of Islamic State plotter from Tamil Nadu questioned

Chennai/Tirupur: The Tamil Nadu police took family members of a suspected member of Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen of Bangladesh and ISIS sympathiser operating from West Bengal and arrested in Kolkata on Tuesday, into custody for questioning in Tirupur on Wednesday.

Police said his wife, two kids and brother were staying in Tirupur. Police identified the arrested as Mosiruddin alias Mosi alias Majnu, a resident of Labhpur in West Bengal's Birbhum district.

After initial rounds of enquiries, the police here said his wife and brother, running a grocery shop, have nothing to do with the terror outfit. However, police had seized SIM cards and voter ID cards from the family, which was staying at Tirupur for the last six years. “We are still questioning them,” police said on Wednesday.

Mosi was arrested from Viswabharati fast passenger train at Burdwan station on Tuesday. While Tamil Nadu police said he was a member of Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), West Bengal police indicated that the suspect had links also with ISIS. When interrogated by West Bengal police and NIA sleuths, Mosi had admitted to his connection to Amjad Sheikh, an alleged key member of JMB arrested in 2014. NIA sleuths had been keeping an eye on Mosi for quite some time.

“He was residing in Tripur district for quite some time now. He was not active in Tamil Nadu about his ideology but used the rented premise as a place to hide himself. He stayed in Tirupur with his wife and two children and brother. He used to regularly travel to Kolkata and sleuths nabbed him on Tuesday as soon as he landed there,” police sources said.

Sleuths were going through Mosiruddin's mobile phone call list, his e-mails and   documents seized from him to confirm his involvement with ISIS and JMB. Burdwan district entered the terror map in October, 2014 when two suspected JMB terrorists were killed while making improvised explosive devices (IEDs) at a rented house in Khagragarh locality of Burdwan.