With highest number of IS recruits, TN a growing concern for NIA

In August 2014, Ramanathapuram police arrested two friends, Abdul Rahman and Rilvan, for demonstrating support for “a violent foreign outfit”. Their crime was that of posting a photograph on Facebook, which showed a group of youngsters sporting T-shirts that had the symbol of the outfit printed on it.

Abdul, who traded in textiles in Bangkok, had come to his hometown, Thondi in Ramanathapuram, for Ramzan. He had procured 100 T-shirts from a hosiery unit in Tirupur through Rilvan, also a textile trader.  

The outfit was not yet banned in India at that point of time. But the outfit and its flag (a stark white-on-black flag called Black Banner or Black Standard) was constantly in the news for being that of the Islamic State (IS), also known as Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) or Islamic State of Syria and Levant (ISIL). “The two had posed for group photographs along with friends, all wearing ISIS T-shirts, and posted the pictures on Facebook,” recalled NM Mayilvahanan, who was the then Superintendent of Police in Ramanathapuram.

Since then, the organisation has grown to become a global terror outfit, surpassing even its parent outfit, al Qaeda, and has been attracting Muslim youth from across the world to network and strive for a common goal — establishing a Caliphate. And from just wearing IS T-shirts, there are many youth in Tamil Nadu who have gone to the next level — subscribing to its ideology and even crossing border to take up arms and join Jihad, the holy war.

Among those who played a key role in this is Khaja Moideen, the self-styled chief of the outfit in Tamil Nadu who was arrested in Delhi on Thursday along with two others, according to sources in the police and Central agencies.

Moideen was apparently trained in Afghanistan, and is capable of luring youth from the community to take up Jihad. Investigators believe it was Moideen who was instrumental in facilitating Haja Fakrudin, the first sympathiser from India to turn into a fighter in Syria, to travel to the warfront in 2014. 

Fakrudin from Parangipettai in Cuddalore was working in Singapore when he became attracted to IS ideology. When he went to Syria in the year 2014, Fakrudin became the first person of Indian origin known to the security agencies, who went to Syria to fight for the Islamic Caliphate.

However, even after these warning signs, the police remained in a denial mode for long. Sources said the then top brass believed that youth attracted to the extremist ideology could be deradicalised through counselling. Before long, however, the senior officers who handled these sessions found that many of them had travelled too far to be able to be brought back into the mainstream. “We used to take help from Muslim clerics for counselling them. But after a while, the clerics started developing cold feet as some of the radicalised youth who were made to attend the counselling sessions began threatening them. The scholars then stopped coming for counselling sessions, fearing backlash,” said a police officer, who was part of the team engaged in the efforts to deradicalise the youth.

Even as the police here dithered, the National Investigation Agency began booking Muslim youth from TN for suspected IS links. It registered an FIR in 2017, covering IS linked activities in state from 2013 to 2016.

In February 2017, NIA registered an FIR against eight from Tamil Nadu, including Haja Fakrudin and Khaja Moideen. At that time Moideen was lodged in Salem central prison after he was arrested for the alleged role in the murder of KP Suresh Kumar, the president of Tiruvallur East unit of Hindu Munnani, in 2014. He was hacked to death while closing his STD booth on June 18 night. The police later disclosed that Suresh Kumar was murdered for his ‘inflammatory’ speech at a public gathering in Avadi in December 2013.

“The accused hailing from Tamil Nadu and some other unknown persons, with an intention to further the activities of IS, a banned terrorist organisation in India, hatched a criminal conspiracy in Chennai and other parts of the country by forming a terrorist gang, which raised and received fund, organised camp, recruited and trained some persons, and facilitated their travel to Syria, to join IS,” NIA said in its FIR.

According to a police officer who keeps a tab on the religious fundamentalists in the State, Khaja Moideen sports a calm demeanour but has the ability to attract and convince youth from the community with his suave talks. His supporters revere him, and most of them call him ‘kaka’, a word used in the community to denote elder brother. The officer claimed that such is Moideen’s grip over the group that his supporters are all too willing to do anything he commands.

Even experienced officers have felt the chills when dealing with Moideen, when he casually drops the name of the officers’ family members and politely enquires about their well-being. 

Besides Moideen, the NIA has allegedly found many from Tamil Nadu, who are in the gulf countries, conspiring to wage Jihad against India. Six months ago, the United Arab Emirates had deported a group for such activities.

Many officers believe after the serial blasts that rocked Sri Lanka in 2019 that left more than 250 dead, it may not take long for the terror outfit to trigger unrest in TN, where men like Moideen is believed to have already set up a well-oiled machinery.

“Luckily, he was caught by the Delhi police on Thursday. Otherwise, he and his associates could have inflicted some damage,” said a retired IPS officer, who had spent a long stint in intelligence wings of State and Centre. According to him, it is important to enlist the help and support of the noblemen from the Muslim community itself to counter the activities of those like Moideen.

Khaja Moideen / status: Arrested 

From Cuddalore. Delhi police arrested Moideen after he escaped TN police radar in November 2019. He , along with Nawas, had gone to West Bengal with the help of a Bengaluru IS module by road. Later, the two either went to Bangladesh or Nepal. When Delhi police arrested them on Thursday, they said they reached Delhi from Nepal.

Syed Ali Nawaz / status: Arrested 

From Kanniyakumari. An aide of Khaja Moideen, Nawaz is believed to be a key member in the murder of Hindu Munnani activist KP Suresh Kumar.