NIA Gets 4-day Custody of Youth Who Wanted to Carry Out Suicide Attack

Kochi: A court here on Monday allowed the NIA four-day custody of a man arrested by the agency on the charge of conspiring to carry out a suicide attack in Kerala.

A NIA court granted the custody of 29-year-old Riyas A, also known as Riyas Aboobacker or Abu Dujana, who is a follower of Sri Lankan Easter bombing mastermind Zahran Hashim. Riyas was remanded to judicial custody when he was produced before the court.

He was picked up on April 28 in connection with an ISIS module case. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) had sought five-day custodial interrogation before the special court.

According to the NIA, during interrogation soon after he was taken into custody, Riyas had disclosed that he had been following speeches and videos of Hashim for more than a year. He allegedly also followed the speeches of controversial Islamic preacher Zakir Naik.

Riyas had admitted that he wanted to carry out a suicide attack in Kerala, a NIA spokesperson had said on April 29. The accused had also disclosed that he had been in online contact with absconding accused Abdul Rashid Abdulla, aka Abu Isa, for a long time and has been following his audio clips, including the clip which he had circulated on social media, instigating others to carry out terror attacks in India.

He revealed he had chatted online with Abdul Khayoom, aka Abu Khalid (accused in the Valapattanam ISIS case), who was believed to be in Syria, the spokesperson said.

The NIA had earlier received inputs that a group of four people has been in contact with some of the accused, including Abdul Rashid, Ashfaq Majeed and Abdul Khayoom, who had already migrated to Afghanistan and Syria.

After verification, the NIA carried out searches at three places - two in Kasaragod and one in Palakkad district — on Sunday. Three group members were interrogated for their ISIS links and their plans.

The Kasaragod ISIS module case was registered in July 2016 following the disappearance of 15 youth from Kasaragod and their subsequent migration to ISIS - 14 to Afghanistan and one to Syria).