The National Investigation Agency (NIA) began raids early on Wednesday morning in Kerala, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu in connection with two distinct bomb incidents that are now under investigation as part of a significant crackdown against ISIS sympathisers, according to sources.
The elite anti-terror investigation agency’s sources claim that the searches are being done in relation to the explosions that took place in Mangaluru and Coimbatore, respectively, in Karnataka on October 23, 2022, and November 19, 2022, in Tamil Nadu. According to sources, simultaneous raids took place at close to 50 locations, including Kodungaiyur in Tamil Nadu and Mannadi in Kerala. The NIA began an investigation on October 27 last year as a result of a bombing that occurred on October 23 in front of the Kottai Eswaran Temple in the Coimbatore district of Tamil Nadu in a vehicle carrying explosives. In the case for which the Tamil Nadu Police first filed a complaint on October 23 of last year, eleven suspected individuals had already been detained by the anti-terror organisation.
The NIA released a statement claiming that Jamesha Mubeen, the deceased accused, had planned to commit a suicide assault and inflict significant damage to the Temple Complex in order to terrorise the neighbourhood after swearing bayath (allegiance) to ISIS.
According to the NIA, “investigations have shown that the accused persons engaged in a criminal conspiracy in February 2022 in the interior of the forested Asanoor and Kadambur sections of Sathyamangalam forest, Erode district.” It continued, “The meetings were organised by previously detained suspect Umar Farook and attended by murdered suspects Jamesha Mubeen, Mohammed Azharudin, Sheikh Hidayatullah, and Sanofar Ali, where they planned and carried out terrorist activities.
The investigation into the November 19 pressure cooker explosion in an autorickshaw in Mangaluru, in which a passenger named Mohammed Shariq was carrying a pressure cooker bomb manufactured from an improvised explosive device, was taken over by the NIA in December of the previous year (IED). Both the auto-rickshaw driver, Purushottam Poojari, and passenger Mohammed Shariq, who was carrying a pressure cooker that had been converted into an IED, were hurt when the auto-rickshaw exploded. The cooker bomb was designed to carry out a large-scale attack to fuel communal tensions in the coastal region and in the state, the agency said.
When the explosion occurred, Shariq was on his way to a predetermined location to carry out the blast.
