New Delhi : The NIA is trying to determine the authenticity of a video purportedly released by the ISIS in which ‘Indian’ fighters have threatened to target New Delhi and avenge the Babri Masjid demolition and the alleged atrocities on Muslims in Kashmir.
The NIA is also checking the antecedents and current whereabouts of all the six people who were part of
the 22-minute video aired on Friday last before being taken off.
Some of them are from Maharashtra and one or two are members of the Azamgarh module, official sources said. The help of an arrested Islamic State operative Areeb Majid is being taken to identify them.
One of the men in the video has claimed that he was at Batla House when police had raided the premises; he had fled afterwards. However, it is not clear whether he was there inside the same house where two alleged Indian Mujahideen militants were killed in an encounter in September 2008, the sources said.
Engineering student Fahad Tanvir Sheikh, a resident of Thane, who travelled to Syria in 2014 along with three other men from the city, has been identified “conclusively” in the video. He has been charge-sheeted by the NIA in absentia under various sections of IPC and Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).
Sources said there was a suspicion that some of the persons in the video were part of the banned Indian Mujahideen before they joined ISIS after snapping ties with their Pakistan-based leadership. Several IM cadres are believed to have joined ISIS since 2014
after they rejected the leadership of its Karnataka born chief Riyaz Ahmad Shahbandri, also known as Riyaz Bhatkal.
The 22-minute video, which is mainly in Arabic, says ‘Jihadis’ from ‘Hind’ wal ‘Sindh’ (India and Pakistan) “will soon take revenge”.
