Student with IS links planned to free Bhatkal from jail: NIA

According to details of his interrogation, Ahmed, along with Mohammed Nafees from Hyderabad, planned a prison escape for Bhatkal, who once headed the Indian Mujahideen and executed a series of blasts across the country for six years before he was arrested from Nepal in August 2013. He is currently lodged in the high security Tihar Jail.

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“They had not yet spelt out the whole plan. Among the various things they had discussed JKH would do in the coming months, freeing Yasin Bhatkal was one of them. This was found in one of the social media conversations between the two,” an officer said.

But a senior NIA officer chose to play down the revelation saying it sounded more like grandstanding as the group does not seem to have the wherewithal to pull off such a task.

“Even Yasin Bhatkal had grand plans of acquiring nuclear weapons and hitting Surat. It is one thing to plan things and another to be able to achieve them,” he said.

A salesman by profession, Hyderabad’s Mohammed Nafees was finance chief of JKH and was instrumental in recruiting Ahmed to head the group’s West Bengal unit. He is already in NIA custody along with 20 others from the group.

Before Ahmed was arrested by the NIA, he had already started to build a unit, said NIA sources. “He was motivating five young men — none of them have attended college — to join the organisation and participate in terror activities,” claimed an officer.

NIA sources said Ahmed was not only in touch with various members of the group but was also allegedly planning to assassinate a TMC MLA accused of being involved in the murder of a political rival from the Muslim community.
Sources said Ahmed had come in contact with Mohammed Nafees Khan while surfing jihadi videos on the internet.

“Ahmed took Khan around Kolkata to identify vital installations that could be targeted by JKH. Ahmed also expressed his intention to target a TMC MLA for the alleged murder of a Muslim political rival. However, all these plans were still at a nascent stage,” said an NIA officer.
Son of a farmer in Hooghly, Ahmed, NIA sources said, was good in studies and had a “polished” personality. However, the lure of the Islamic State pulled him into jihadi chatter forums on the internet over the past one year, sources said. This is how he met Khan and several other members of the group, they said.