NIA searches houses of Ansarulla men across TN

The searches were carried out at five locations in Ramanathapuram district, two in Theni district and a location each in Chennai, Tirunelveli, Madurai, Thanjavur, Perambalur, Nagapattinam andTiruvarur districts.

“During the searches, a laptop, seven mobile phones, five SIM cards, three memory cards, one hard disk drive, two pen drives, one internet dongle, nine CDs/DVDs and about 50 documents were seized,” the agency said.

The houses of Mohamed Ibrahim (58) of Nagapattinam, Mohamed Sheik Maitheen (40) of Madurai, Meeran Ghani (33) of Theni, Gulam Nabi Asath (37) of Perambalur district, Rafi Ahamed (55) of Ramanathapuram district, Munthasir (39) of Ramanathapuram district, Umar Barook (48) of Thanjavur district and Farook (26) of Ramanathapuram district were searched.

In Chennai, a six-member team led by inspector Senthilkumar reached Toufiq Ahmed’s house at Parry’s Corner at 6.30 am and the search lasted five hours. A SIM card and a bank passbook among other documents were seized. “The seized materials will be submitted before the Special Court for NIA Cases, Chennai, and the digital devices will be subjected to cyber forensic examination,” an official said.

A team also searched the house of M Mohammed Asarudeen (25), one of the arrested 14, in Muthupettai, but since the house was locked, they contacted his parents in Chennai, who requested a day’s time to reach the house. However, officials refused to heed the request and broke open the locks in the presence of Shiek Fareed, one of Asarudeen’s kin. SDPI State Secretary Abubekkar Siddique objected to the search but the police team led by Muthupettai Inspector Rajesh stopped him.