Indian police raided seven locations in the southern city of Coimbatore on Wednesday in pursuit of a suspected ISIS extremist group cell with links to the suicide bombers who killed over 250 people in Sri Lanka in April. Officers seized mobile phones, SIM cards, computer materials, and documents during the Coimbatore raids.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) in India announced that they had arrested and were questioning seven individuals aged between the ages of 26-38. They are believed to be propagating ISIS ideology to recruit people for carrying out attacks in southern India.
The main accused in the case, Mohammed Azarudeen, had been Facebook friends with Zahran Hashim, the suspected mastermind of Sri Lanka’s Easter Sunday bombings, NIA said in a statement. Azarudeen maintained a Facebook page through which he propagated Daesh ideology, while other members of his group “have also been sharing radical contents attributed to Hashim”.
Hashim, a radical preacher, led the National Tawheed Jamaath, one of the two local extremist groups that were involved in the synchronized blasts in Colombo, Sri Lanka’s capital, and two other towns.
