NIA gets 10-day custody of Meerut man who was arrested for supplying weapons to Islamic State-inspired terrorist group

New Delhi: A Delhi court on Friday granted the National Investigation Agency 10-day custody of Naeem, arrested for allegedly providing weapons to members of a suspected IS-inspired terrorist group busted after a multi-city swoop last week.

The 21-year-old was arrested from Meerut in western Uttar Pradesh on Thursday and produced before a district judge on Friday, who sent the the probe agency to another court.

Special Judge Rakesh Sanyal then sent Naeem to 10-day NIA custody.

Naeem, the probe agency says, supplied weapons to the members of a suspected Islamic State-inspired terror group that was arrested on 26 December.

The NIA had arrested the 10 men, including a ‘mufti’ from Amroha, also in western Uttar Pradesh, who it said were planning suicide attacks and serial blasts targeting politicians and government installations in Delhi and other parts of north India.

The NIA had seized a locally made rocket launcher, material for suicide vests and 112 alarm clocks to be used as timers during its searches in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh.

A Delhi court previously allowed the NIA 10 days’ custodial interrogation of the men after it produced them before the court on 27 December, a day after they were arrested.

Those arrested included the alleged mastermind, 29-year-old Mohammed Suhail, a Muslim legal expert empowered to give rulings on religious matters, from Amroha, and an engineering student of Amity University in Noida and a third-year undergraduate student in humanities of a university in Delhi as well as two welders, according to NIA officials.