IS links: Kerala police gave Kanakamala lead 3 months ago
The cyber sleuths had opened and operated many fake IDs to infiltrate into the forums.
KOZHIKODE: The state police gave the first lead on the secretive gatherings of IS-inspired radicalised youths at Kanakamala in Kannur district three months ago, according to sources. They chose the hillock, situated near Peringathur, 16 km from Thalassery, as it is a popular picnic spot. Acting on the report, the National Investigation Agency busted the module by arresting five persons on Sunday from Kanakamala and one from Kuttiadi in Kozhikode district. According to the NIA, the members of the module were planning to target two judges of the Kerala High Court, two leaders of Sangh Parivar and one police official.
Though the public were suspicious about the visits of the youngsters to the spot, it was the tracking of some fake IDs on the Facebook and later in the chat group in Telegram by police that shed light on the activities of the youths. For more than six months, the police had been tracking the online discussion forums in Malayalam. The cyber sleuths had opened and operated many fake IDs to infiltrate into the forums.
An official told DC that such forums were used by ultra outfits to identify and recruit cadres from the grassroots. “We feel it is the third or fourth layer of IS modules,” he said and added that those with direct IS links would be at the top layer. “In each layer, there would be one or two with links to the higher layer and those picked up from the lower layers would be elevated to the higher,” he pointed out.
The online crusaders used the fake FB IDs ‘akbar k puram,’ ‘sameer ali’ and ‘al muhagiroon.’ Several blogs were also launched by the propagators to charm youngsters first into the Islamic way of Salafi living and then to the IS path. These IDs and those who operated them were under watch for some time. The reports on the importance of Kanakamala as a rendezvous and the discussion forums on the social networking sites were submitted to the DGP and later passed on to the NIA.
Since then, the NIA officials have been tracking the online activities as well as offline movements of many of the youths involved. The sleuths also tracked a website ‘aloloommalayalam.com’ founded by a group of Muslim youngsters from the state who pursued Islamic studies in Yemen, sources said. The Dar al-Hadith Institute is a Salafi school of Islamic studies in Yemen which attracted hundreds of Muslim youths from India seeking a pure form of Islam.