New Delhi: A chemical engineer and a teacher at Shaheen College in Karnataka’s Bidar who “radicalised and recruited gullible youths to form different modules” — that’s how sources in India’s security establishment describe 33-year-old Haris Farooqui, who was arrested for allegedly being the India head of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.
Last week, Assam Police arrested Farooqui and his associate Anurag Singh alias Rehan, who were allegedly camping in neighbouring Bangladesh and planned to cross over to India at Dhubri Sector to carry out “sabotage activities”. They were handed over to the National Investigation Agency (NIA), which has several cases against them.
Rehan (30) worked as an assistant section officer in New Delhi’s Rail Bhawan and earned Rs 9 lakh annually, one source told ThePrint.
“Anurag was from Panipat and did his (electronics) engineering from Hisar’s Guru Jambheshwar University. After that, he took exams for government jobs,” the source said.
It’s not clear how Anurag came in touch with Farooqui, nor if he was the one who inspired him to convert to Islam. Sources, however, said that Anurag married a woman from Bangladesh.
According to a second source, Farooqui, who’s from Dehradun, is “highly radicalised” and had been on the radar of the agencies for the past five years for his involvement in “furthering the terrorist activities of ISIS”, a proscribed terrorist organisation. Farooqui was allegedly instrumental in setting up ISIS modules in Karnataka, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, and Goa and was in touch with “key handlers from across the border”. The two also funded terrorist activities of ISIS, the source said.
“Both of them are highly indoctrinated and motivated leaders of ISIS in India. They had furthered the cause of ISIS in India through conspiracies to carry out recruitment, terror funding, and terror acts through IEDs at several places across India,” the source said.
The two, according to his source, were in touch with their “foreign-based handler” through secret communication apps and were handling the militant group’s India operations.
“They were radicalising and recruiting gullible youth, both physically and over social media, to join ISIS and promote its violent ideology. For this purpose, they would share incriminating videos of ‘Bayat’, along with materials related to violent jihad and Hijrah to Syria,” the source said.
Bayat, pronounced Bay’ah, is an Islamic practice of declaring one’s allegiance to a particular leader.
Apart from the cases being probed by the NIA, the two men are also accused in several pending investigations in several states, including Delhi and Uttar Pradesh.
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‘A topper, made IEDs’
According to the source, Farooqui was a student at Aligarh Muslim University and was frequently the top of his class. After quickly rising through the ranks of the Islamic State, he allegedly began arranging logistics for the group.
“He is smart and knows how to target gullible youths and indoctrinate them. He first started with smaller groups and then expanded his operation,” this source said. “Since he’s a chemical engineer, he knows about different explosives and chemicals used in making bombs and thus was also involved in making Improvised Explosive Devices.”
Farooqui’s father is an Unani doctor and retired from Dehradun’s Nagar Nigam Unani Dispensary. He’s one of six siblings and has three brothers and two sisters, the source said.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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