A SPECIAL court in Mumbai on Saturday remanded Shamil Nachan, an accused arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Friday to NIA custody for seven days. Nachan was the sixth arrest in the 'Pune ISIS module' case that was initially probed by Pune police and Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) before the NIA took over the case. Nachan is the son of Saquib Nachan who was earlier convicted and served a 10-year sentence for his role in the 2002-03 triple blast case in Mumbai. He was released after serving his sentence in 2017. Nachan, a Padgha resident, was produced before a special court on Saturday. Seeking his custody, the NIA argued that he had been involved in terrorist activities since April 2022. The NIA further argued that during their probe, they found that Nachan was in contact with the other accused arrested in the case. The agency further argued that he was also at Kondhwa in Pune when IEDs were being assembled by the accused and a controlled explosion too had been carried out which was to be replicated at other places in the country. He had been working in collaboration with five other accused, identified as Zulfikar Ali Barodawala, Mohammed Imran Khan, Mohammed Yunus Saki, Simab Nasiruddin Kazi and Abdul Kadir Pathan, along with some other suspects, the agency said. Two of the accused, namely Imran Khan and Mohammed Yunus Saki, were members of the ‘Sufa terrorist gang’ and were absconding. NIA had declared them ‘most wanted’ in a case relating to recovery of explosives from a car in Rajasthan in April 2022, the agency said. The court observed that the accused had also given a false mobile number as his own in court record. After hearing arguments from both sides, the court remanded him to NIA custody for seven days.
