A terrorist a day , keeps the ‘Jihad’ away

Pioneer News Service | Kannur

The Kerala Police on Tuesday formally arrested yet another terror operative, Muhammad Navas (30) of Rahmania House, Neerchal, Marakkarkandi, Kannur, who, the police said, was a close associate of Nazeer, said to be the head of recruitments to Lashkar-e-Tayyeba. Nazeer, who had gone underground with the launch of the police hunt for him, also hailed from the same place as Navas’.

The police had got conclusive evidence to prove that Navas had a big role in attracting other terror operatives Muhammad Fayaz of Thayyil Kannur, who was killed by security forces on the international border in Lolab valley, Kupwara sector, Jammu and Kashmir last month. He was also instrumental in brining Muhammad Faizal, who was arrested for being a recruiter and human resource smuggler for LeT, the police said.

The Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate of Thalassery remanded him in custody for 14 days. He was in police custody for the past several days and the police formally registered his arrest on Tuesday after getting conclusive evidence for his role in the terror operations within the State.

According to the police, Nawas had arranged a rented building for Nazeer for conducting terror classes. With this, the number of extremists arrested in Kannur since the beginning of the terror hunt by the specially constituted anti-terror squad (ATS) rose to seven.

NDF activist Abdul Jaleel of Edakkad was the first person to be arrested in Kerala in the current anti-terror operations, after the police were convinced that he had spoken to the Malayalee extremists in Kashmir. The next to be arrested was Muhammad Faizal, who had recruited Muhammad Fayaz, who was killed in Kashmir. He was arrested after Safiya, mother of Fayaz, had identified him as the man who had taken her son away from home on September 10 promising to get him a job in Bangalore.

The other arrested extremists were Mujeeb of Mouvanchery, Kannur, Nainar Ali of Maidanappally, Kannur and the two from Ernaklulam district, Feroze of Pathalam and Badaruddin of Kaloor, Kochi.

Sources in the police said that with so many of his associates in custody, Nazeer, reportedly the top-most LeT operative in Kerala, and his right-hand man Ibrahim Moulvi from Vellamunda, Wayanad district, would soon fall into the police net. They said they could not reveal the details as it could jeopardise their hunt. The police, however, said that they had got valuable information from Nawas, the last man arrested.

At the same time, BJP State president PK Krishnadas and former president CK Padmanabhan asked the Government to ban Islamist organisation NDF (National Development Front) and Abdul Nasser Madani’s PDP (People’s Democratic Party) as their roles in the terrorist operations had reportedly become amply clear.

Krishnadas said in Thiruvananthapuram that PDP chairman Madani and his wife Sufiya should be subjected to polygraph (lie-detector) procedure. The BJP had been arguing that Sufiya Madani had played a role in the burning of the Salem-bound Tamil Nadu State bus on September 9, 2005 at Kalamassery off Kochi. The bus had been burned allegedly for mounting pressure on the Governments to release Madani from the Coimbatore prison where he was then lodged in connection with the serial blasts case in the TN city.