The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Friday arrested a man from the Thane district in connection with the Maharashtra ISIS module case. He has been accused of promoting violent activities of the proscribed terrorist outfit. With this arrest, the NIA has apprehended a total of seven persons in the case so far. The man identified as Shamil Saquib Nachan was arrested after the central agency's sleuths raided his residence in the Padgha area of the district.
The NIA stated that Nachan was allegedly actively involved in promoting terrorist activities of ISIS. He was involved in the fabrication, training, and testing of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) for the commission of terrorist acts, the agency claimed in the statement, as reported by news agency PTI.
It further mentioned that Nachan was working in collaboration with the other six accused – Zulfikar Ali Barodawala, Mohammed Imran Khan, Mohammed Yunus Saki, Simab Nasiruddin Kazi, Abdul Kadir Pathan and Aakif Ateeque Nachan, along with some other suspects.
According to the NIA, Khan and Saki were members of the 'Sufa terrorist gang' and were declared 'most wanted' by the agency in a case relating to the recovery of explosives from a car in Rajasthan in April 2022.
The statement mentioned that these members of an ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) sleeper module, including Shamil, were operating from a house in Kondhwa, Pune, "where they had assembled IEDs and also organised and participated in Bomb training and making Workshop last year."
"They had also carried out a controlled explosion at this location to test an IED fabricated by them," it read
The NIA said that its investigations into the ISIS Pune module case on August 3, 2023, have shown that the accused had plans to "commit terrorist acts with the aim to disturb peace and communal harmony of the country."
"They had planned to wage a war against the Government of India in furtherance of the ISIS agenda," the agency stated.