NIA arrests 5, busts Islamic State module: Hyderabad is endangered from within

Make no mistake about it. The detention of 11 Muslim youth, all from the old city area of Hyderabad, in an early morning swoop by the National Investigation Agency (NIA), is bad news. They have been accused of being part of an Islamic State (IS) terror module, out to foment trouble in Hyderabad, perhaps during the holy month of Ramzan. Five of them have been arrested and are part of the NIA FIR.

For years, mention youth living beyond the Charminar and the stereotype would be that of an uneducated Muslim or at best, well-read only in religious scriptures. No longer so. Two of the accused are brothers — one, a software engineer and the younger one a computer graduate. The elder one, Mohammed Ibrahim Yazdani is a product of Anwar Ul Uloom, a well-known college in Vikarabad in Ranga Reddy district of Telangana and appears to be the kingpin of this module. The others are youth, most of them under 32. Nine members of the group are graduates, four of them in computer science. Though the Syria-based handler of this IS module is yet to be identified, the police confirm that the 11 youth knew each other very well.

Though the NIA led the search and raid operation at a dozen locations, the Telangana police claim the tip-off came from its intelligence wing. The module was under surveillance for the past three months but it is was in the last one month that chatter was focused on carrying out terror attacks at multiple locations in Hyderabad and other cities. Apparently, the gang even dared to indulge in firing practise at an isolated place in Cyberabad police limits on the outskirts of Hyderabad. Intel cops also snooped in on conversations about plans to target individuals. It was then that the NIA decided to move in to neutralise the module.

It was a classic terror module with the members engaged in occupations that wouldn’t arouse any suspicion. For instance, one worked in a cloth shop, another was a motor mechanic, another worked in the government’s citizen services centre.

The sleuths are gauging the effectiveness of the material confiscated which includes two 9mm pistols, explosive material like urea and hydrogen peroxide, some other chemicals, electronic gadgets that can be used to trigger explosives, laptops, pressure meters, Rs 15 lakh in cash, 25 mobile phones and simcards. If the indoctrination of these youth happened online, their laptops and mobile phones, will be a mine of information.

It is the not the first time that Hyderabad is showing up on the IS radar. In January 2015, the Cyberabad police intercepted 32-year-old Salman Mohiuddin, who was trying to join the terror group by travelling to Dubai and from there to Syria via Turkey. He was an engineer who had been indoctrinated virtually by a Hyderabadi woman, Afsha Jabeen, based in Dubai. Jabeen was deported to India in September last year.

Between July and September 2014, as many as 14 youth from Hyderabad and Karimnagar, were stopped in Kolkata, when they were trying to flee the country through the porous Bangladesh border to fight the war for the IS. The Telangana police brought them back to Hyderabad, counselled them and their parents while the counter intelligence wing kept an eye on their movements.

I spoke to one of the youths in October last year. The 24-year-old was an engineer, with looks that could easily bag him modelling contracts. He told me that his handler had convinced him that he would be serving the cause of the Almighty if he indulged in jihad for the Islamic state. Financial help was provided through middlemen and the entire brainwashing took place through chat apps on social media.

Despite the watch that the 14 youth were under, two of them escaped to Nagpur to try and catch a flight to Srinagar to make their way to Syria in December 2015. They were arrested at Nagpur airport. Proof that the IS hold over them was far more effective than that of the Indian police.

Today’s arrests have proved that the ’treat the youth with kidgloves’ policy of the Telangana police has not quite worked. The indoctrination is so deep and effective that no amount of counter-indoctrination indulged by the security agencies and anti-IS propaganda has been able to bring them out of the IS’s vice-like grip.

It is not good news for India that a divisive force, from across the seas, is able to reach out to young, educated, fragile minds and turn them into enemies of the state. Today’s development will now make the cops suspect every Muslim student in the city or Telangana towns. Tarring everyone with the same lathi is now a real danger. The collateral damage is going to be huge.

On social media, already the news of the arrests has been greeted with taunts about Hyderabad’s 41 percent Muslim population. Jibes over whether the Muslim community deserves 12 per cent reservation in Telangana. It will be a matter of time before the ‘Go to Pakistan’ chant starts. Well-educated Muslim youth going astray, set back the entire community. Any software major in Hyderabad or elsewhere will now think a hundred times before he recruits a Muslim software graduate, more so if his postal address is on the other side of the Musi river.

Policing the cyberworld through snooping — already the tool employed to track such sinister terror modules — becomes all the more important now. To catch up with terrorists, who have upped their game means the cops no longer can rely on traditional methods of fighting terrorism. The Telangana police have been effective so far in neutralising the IS modules but is it prepared to tackle deeply radicalised lone wolves.

Politicians like Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi have a huge responsibility on their shoulders now. The tendency to exist in ghettos — both Muslim and Hindu — in parts of the Old city and west Hyderabad, has been like a curse. It cuts off a community’s connections to another point of view, another thought, a contrarian way of looking at things. It stops them from questioning the stereotypes that a mixed religious population would allow.

Some fresh air needs to flow into areas like Moghulpura, Talabkatta, Panchmohalla, Barkas, Chandrayangutta, Mirchowk and the like. The enemy has got into the galli, mohalla and homes of Hyderabad. The city needs pest control to drive out the IS termite.