Pune Crime Files: Influenced by IS groups over social media, this teenaged girl defied multiple deradicalisation attempts

Brainwashed online at age 16

Sadiya, who initially resided in Kondhwa and later in Vishrantwadi area of Pune, first came on the police radar in 2015 when she was just 16 years old. A bright student at an English medium school, she joined a city college for Class 11 when, the police suspect, she started watching IS-related news and other content on the internet out of curiosity.

It did not take long for online operatives of ISIS to contact her, it is alleged. Soon, she joined some groups on Facebook and WhatsApp through which she got linked to suspected ISIS operatives in Sri Lanka, England, Saudi Arabia, Philippines and other countries as well as other Indian nationals. She used to communicate with some of them through FB, Twitter, WhatsApp, Telegram, Kik and via her email accounts, police said.

After reportedly being brainwashed over such platforms, she started believing in the IS propaganda of establishing a Caliphate and was ready to go to Syria in 2017. After learning about her activities, the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) got in touch with Sadiya’s family and started counselling her in December 2015. Retired assistant commissioner of police Bhanupratap Barge, who then headed the Pune unit of the ATS, says, “She was a minor, so we did not arrest her. Attempts were made to de-radicalise her with the help of Islamic clerics in Pune.”

Police said she came to know about Dabiq, an online magazine of the IS, and also got updates from a social media group called ‘Daula News Room’. ATS officials said that before being radicalised through online content, Sadiya used to wear modern clothes. Later she started wearing a burqa and practiced all rituals meticulously. She was also said to have started talking in a “fanatic” manner.

The police said Sadiya was found to be in touch with IS operative Mohammed Sirajuddin through Facebook. A native of Gulbarga in Karnataka, Sirajuddin was an assistant manager with the Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL) in Jaipur. He was arrested by the Rajasthan ATS on December 10, 2015. The NIA took over the case and recently a special court convicted Sirajuddin under sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), for arranging and assisting active “Islamic State operatives” in organising online discussions and meetings towards planning and executing “acts of violence and terrorism.”

Held in Delhi and Kashmir, but released

Investigators nabbed Sadiya in Delhi in July 2017 while she was on her way to meet some people in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). She was suspected of being in touch with a J&K man whom she wanted to marry before moving out of the country.

After questioning, the officers handed Sadiya back to her family, warning them that she remained “highly radicalised” and advised strong counselling by experienced Islamic scholars for de-radicalisation. On returning to Pune, she resumed her studies and even took up a job at a call centre, the police said.

A few months later, on January 26, 2018, the J&K Police arrested Sadiya over suspicious activities, but she was released later due to lack of evidence and handed over to her family once again. A month later, she held a press conference in Pune saying “she did not want to look to her past” and wanted to finish her education. Sadiya also claimed that she had gone to Jammu and Kashmir to “secure admission in a nursing course at a local college”. Later, she joined a mass communication course at a college in Maharashtra’s Baramati.

Links to Kashmiri couple in ISKP case; NIA arrest

On July 12, 2020, the NIA arrested Sadiya along with Nabeel Khatri (then 27 years old), a gymnasium operator from Kondhwa, for alleged links with a Kashmiri couple Jahanazaib Sami and his wife Hina Bashir Beigh in the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) case. Sami and Beigh were earlier arrested by the Delhi Police’s Special Cell on March 8. The case was later transferred to the NIA.

In September 2020, the NIA filed a chargesheet against Sami, Beigh, Khatri and Sadiya and one Abdullah Basith, under sections of the IPC and UAPA pertaining to criminal conspiracy, sedition and creating communal disharmony. Basith, a Hyderabad youth, was also arrested in another NIA case.

The NIA claimed that Beigh, who completed her higher education in Pune, was radicalised in 2014-15 by reading IS-related content on social media. Sami and Beigh got married in 2017 as both allegedly supported the IS ideology.

As per the NIA statement, Sami, Beigh, Basith and Khatri “tried to make an improvised explosive device” and were “planning mass killings” and had even conducted reconnaissance of “sensitive locations” in Maharashtra that are frequented by foreigners.

The agency also alleged that Sadiya and the other accused were allegedly “conspiring to utilise the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protests to instigate Muslims against the Indian government by coining seditious slogans, making graffiti at public places and highlighting the same on social and international media.”

Links to Pune doctor arrested in July

The police said that during her college days in Pune, Sadiya is suspected to have come in contact with a religious foundation in the city. Many people associated with the foundation were under the scanner of security agencies. Earlier, a few suspects linked to the foundation were arrested in connection with some bomb blasts, the police said.

Police sources said Dr Adnanali Sarkar, a 43-year-old anaesthesiologist in Pune’s Kondhwa who was arrested by the NIA on July 26, 2023 in the Maharashtra ISIS module case, is also suspected to be linked to this foundation.

Sarkar was earlier questioned by the Maharashtra ATS in 2016. The police said his name had then cropped up during the investigation of a meeting held in Pune on December 18, 2015 by alleged ISIS operatives who were later arrested by the NIA from different parts of the country. Probe revealed Sarkar was a “Bohra” Muslim, who later got influenced to accept the “Sunni” faith. He had studied at BJ Medical College in Pune and worked at some reputed private establishments. He resided in Kondhwa with his wife and children and was also learnt to have given religious speeches.

Sarkar is among several people arrested by the Pune City police, Maharashtra ATS and the NIA since July this year for alleged links to an IS terror conspiracy.