New Delhi, Oct 17 (UNI) The Delhi NIA Special Court on Friday sentenced 15 accused convicted in the ISIS conspiracy case to rigorous imprisonment from five to 10 years for their affiliation to the terror organisation and for hatching a conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism in India at its behest, the probe agency said on Saturday.
The court also slapped a monetary fine ranging from Rs 38 thousand to 1.3 lakh against them.
According to the National Investigation Agency (NIA), this was first of its kind in which an extensive terrorist conspiracy involving online radicalization was hatched on cyber space in the aftermath of declaration of Islamic Caliphate by Abu-Baqar-Al-Bagdadi in 2014, and Yusuf Al Hindi alias Shafi Armar, based in Syria had slowly radicalized a number of accused and eventually motivated them towards violent jihad as propagated by ISIS.
The convicted accused are Nafees Khan,Mudabbir Mushtaq Sheikh, Abu Anas, Mufti Abdus Sami,Azhar Khan,Amzad khan, Mohd Shariff Moinudeen,Asif Ali,Mohd Hussain,Syed Mujahid, Najmul Huda, Mohd. Obedullah, Md. Aleem, Md. Afzal, and Sohail Ahmad.
This case arose from an FIR registered by the NIA in New Delhi on December 9, 2015 under various sections related to a criminal conspiracy hatched by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) to establish its base in India by recruiting Muslim youth for them by using different social media platforms.
During investigation, searches were conducted in various cities across the country and 19 accused were arrested.
"It was revealed that the accused persons had formed an organization by name Junood-ul-Khilafa-Fil-Hind, a group seeking to establish Caliphate in India and pledging allegiance to ISIS/ISIL, to recruit Muslim youth to work for ISIS and commit acts of terrorism in India at the behest of one Yusuf-Al-Hindi alias Shafi Armar alias Anjan Bhai, who was based in Syria and was purportedly the media chief of ISIS," the NIA officials said.
This case had a huge impact on the like-minded people who were likely to join ISIS and after the arrest of these terrorists, their activities were minimized and their other associates were identified and questioned to unravel their further plans, the officials further said.
Several ISIS sympathisers,who had gone to join ISIS, were intercepted at various locations in the Middle East and were deported back to India and investigation conducted by the agency stopped the facilitation of the ISIS members in India as well as abroad, the NIA added.
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