Kolkata: A Kolkata court Wednesday sent Islamic State terror module brain Abdul Raqib Qureshi, arrested from Madhya Pradesh’s Khandwa by the sleuths of Kolkata police’s Special Task Force (STF), to police custody till January 23.
Qureshi was arrested Monday on the basis of the interrogation of two of his subordinates in the terror module, Mohammad Saddam and Syed Ahmed, who was arrested by STF sleuths from West Bengal’s Howrah district January 7.
Wednesday, the public prosecutor told the court that Qureshi was entrusted with the task of expanding IS sleeper cells in the country through systematic brainwashing of youths.
“Qureshi also used to provide funds and technical support for that purpose. The police need to take him into custody for the purpose of further investigation and interrogation,” the public prosecutor argued.
The judge accepted the plea and sent Qureshi to police custody till January 23.
The STF sleuths have learned that before his active association with IS, Qureshi was a senior and active leader of the banned Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and he was the key person in inspiring Saddam to join the IS. Later Saddam brainwashed and roped Syed Ahmed into the terror module.
In a diary seized from Saddam’s residence, the STF sleuths have found an oath of joining the IS, written in Arabic. The STF sleuths recovered, from their devices, crucial clues on how the two, especially Saddam, used to contact his IS handlers in Syria and Saudi Arabia using the Telegram Web medium. The recovery of such crucial clues, especially the ones related to the videos and still photographs about the activities of the suicide squad modules of IS, has kept the investigators worried.
–IANS