BENGALURU: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Thursday made significant seizures in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, and Gujarat in connection with the conspiracy by the Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) and the Tehrik-e-Taliban to recruit and radicalise impressionable youth in India in order to spread terror in the country.
In an official release on Friday, the NIA stated that the seizures were made during multiple raids across the four states. “A host of incriminating digital devices were recovered during the searches at three locations in Maharashtra and one location each in the other three states,” the NIA said.
The premier Central anti-terrorist agency is examining the devices to “track those involved in the conspiracy and thwart their efforts to destabilise the country through the unlawful and radicalisation plans and campaigns of the two terror outfits,” it added.
The raids were part of the NIA investigations in a case registered in April 2023 against two accused recruited earlier by these banned organisations. “The two were involved in a series of disruptive terror-linked activities, including the transfer of funds abroad for the purchase of land in Afghanistan. The NIA investigations have revealed that they were also involved in the radicalisation of vulnerable and susceptible youth and their recruitment to the two organisations to further the activities of their terror fronts active in India to disrupt its peace and communal harmony,” the NIA added.
While AQIS is a terrorist organisation striving to establish an Islamic state and an Islamic Caliphate in the Indian Subcontinent, Tehrik-e-Taliban is an umbrella organisation of various Islamist armed militant groups operating along the Afghan-Pakistani border.