Following the Easter Sunday bombing in Sri Lanka, which claimed the lives of over 250 people, the Indian National Intelligence Agency (NIA) has launched sweeping raids in Tamil Nadu and Kerala resulting in two arrests.
In Kerala, the NIA arrested Riyas Aboobacker, who was residing in the Palakkad area of Kerala, after gaining confessions that he wanted to carry out a suicide attack in Kerala.
Aboobacker further claimed during the interrogation that he had followed radical Islamic preachers on social media such as Zakir Naik, Abdul Rashid Abdulla and Zahran Hashim, who is alleged to have planned the Easter Sunday bombing. He also admitted that he had been in contact with Abdul Rashid Abdulla.
In Tamil Nadu, the intelligence service arrested a Sri Lankan national known as Roshan who located in an apartment at Poonamallee alongside two other men, three women and a child.
Roshan, along with the other men, were allegedly friends of Zahran Hashim and had been in contact with the now banned National Thowheeth Jama’ath (NTJ).
He did not have proper travel documents and had entered India a few months ago; he was alleged to have stayed with other Sri Lankan nationals who had valid papers.
There have also been raids on the Popular Front of India (PFI) and Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI) in Tiruchirapalli and Kumbakonam relating to the murder of a Paattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) activist who had opposed religious conversion.
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