KOCHI: In the wake of the gold smuggling case bringing into renewed focus the issue of ‘terror financing’ in Kerala, the Intelligence Bureau (IB), National Investigation Agency (NIA) and Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) of the state police are revisiting all terror-related cases probed in the state so far. Through this, the agencies intend to connect the missing links of the sources of money that came from abroad to fund anti-national activities.
Intelligence officials said right from the probe into the 2010 palm chopping case — in which T J Joseph, a faculty member of Newman College, Thodupuzha, had been targeted by Islamist ultras — to the 2013 Narath arms training camp case and 2016 Kanakamala Islamic State (IS) case, there had been specific inputs on fund flow from abroad into the state.
Loknath Behera, state police chief, told TNIE that the ATS has been asked to draw up a list of terror-related cases in Kerala which will be scrutinised afresh to track the fund flow. As per the NIA chargesheet in the Narath case, “bank transaction details of some of the accused were collected and international transactions on a massive scale were found in the accounts. Foreign account(a/c) details of Saneulla Shabandri, hailing from Bhatkal in Karnataka, was found in the house of an accused”.
“In almost all the terror-related cases probed in the state, there were links to sources of money mainly from the Middle East. We haven’t closed the probe in any of the cases though the court pronounced the verdict in a few of them and sentenced the accused. Despite plugging the channels -- normally used by these operators -- to stem the flow of money, they devised newer and newer methods to push in the funds for anti-national activities,” said a New Delhi-based senior official.