A 28-year-old resident of Uttar Kannada district of Karnataka, Sayyad M Idris, was arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) for having links in the Lashkar e Toiba (LeT) recruitment case.
A statement from the agency said Idris was “part of various social media groups run by Pakistani-based LeT handlers in their effort to recruit individuals for sleeper cells of LeT and for furthering terrorist activities.”
NIA officials told CNN News18 that Idris was part of various social media groups, including WhatsApp and other encrypted platforms, being run by alleged Pakistani handlers.
“He is a class 11 dropout, used to work as a mason and was regularly contributing to social media platforms that were being handled by Pakistanis,” an NIA official said.
Idris’s brother is a small-time grocery-cum-stationary shop owner, while Idris himself hardly did any work, officials said when asked about the financial profile of the family.
The agency’s investigation in this case began with a Kolkata college student, Tania Parvin, who has been accused of honey trapping Army and Air Force personnel on behalf of LeT.
Like Parvin, the NIA said the case against Idris is about, “Pakistan-based handlers belonging to proscribed terrorist outfit LeT using various social media platforms to radicalise and recruit vulnerable youth for sleeper cells, to propagate their ideology and for abetting & advocating unlawful activities.”
The NIA’s chargesheet against Parvin said she ran social media groups under fake names to recruit more people for LeT. Mustafa, ‘Hamza Tahir’, ‘Mutahijab’, ‘Abrar Fahad’, ‘Ibnu Adam’ and ‘Abu Thurab’ were some of her pseudonyms. Ghumnam Tiger was one of the WhatsApp groups that she ran for recruitment and propagation of Lashkar’s ideology.
NIA officials said Idris was also part of the same social media groups and would write in Hindi in Roman script. His interrogation could lead to more arrests of members of these groups, NIA said.
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