NIA arrests PFI master weapon trainer in Karnataka

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has arrested a Popular Front of India (PFI) master weapons trainer living under an assumed identity in Karnataka for his involvement in the Nizamabad terror conspiracy case, the agency said on Wednesday.
The 33-year-old accused has been identified as Nossam Mohamed Yunus, alias Yunus, of Nandyal, who was working in the inverter business of his elder brother and was arrested on Tuesday.
The case pertains to a criminal conspiracy hatched by the leaders and cadres of the now-banned outfit PFI to recruit and radicalise youth and provide them with arms training to promote and carry out terrorist activities with the ultimate objective of establishing Islamic rule in India. When the house of Yunus was searched in September 2022, he was found to be absconding along with his wife and two minor sons. The NIA investigations have revealed that Yunus had shifted his entire family from Andhra Pradesh and was hiding out in the Cowl Bazar area of the Bellary district of Karnataka, where he had assumed a new identity, Basheer, and a new profession as a plumber.
“Yunus was a master weapons trainer and was providing weapons training to the youth recruited by PFI in the Andhra Pradesh and Telangana regions. He was also the PE Training State Coordinator for these two states in the Nizamabad PFI case,” said the NIA. Yunus, who has been giving evasive replies during NIA interrogation, has named one Shaikh Ilyas Ahmed as also being involved in the PFI Weapons Training programme. Ilyas is currently absconding. With his arrest, the NIA has once again exposed PFI’s radical and nefarious plans to drive a communal wedge among the communities and to use innocent Muslim youth to disturb and disrupt peace and communal harmony in the country.
Telangana Police initially registered an FIR in the case on 4 July last year. The NIA had taken over the case and re-registered it. The NIA has so far filed two chargesheets against 16 accused persons
in this case.