More than 60 NDF terrorists detained for interrogation

The newly formed anti-terrorist squad of the Kerala Police and the intelligence department on Friday launched a massive hunt for operatives of Islamist resistance outfit National Development Front (NDF) after they confirmed several of its activists had links with terror elements outside the State.

The search for such operatives had begun after the police were convinced of this with the arrest of NDF activist Abdul Jaleel of Edakkad, Kannur, on Sunday, even as top police officials said that an intense probe was necessary with the possibility that Kerala could have become a recruitment base for terror outfits outside the State.

A large number of NDF activists in Kannur district were under police scanner for their suspected links with terror groups. The investigators have intensified surveillance on NDF workers in Kannur, Malappuram, Kozhikode and Ernakulam districts on the basis of information provided by Jaleel, who had received calls on his mobile phone till October 5 from one or both of the Malayalee militants killed in Lolab, Kashmir on October 7.

The NDF, campaigning in Kerala as an Islamic resistance force, could have of late become an outfit from which terror operatives were being recruited, sources in the police said. They confirmed that the focus now was indeed on the NDF as the persons arrested or questioned so far had some connection with the outfit.

Apart from the police investigation on the NDF, political parties of the State also launched an offensive against the Islamist outfit. CPI(M) State secretary Pinarayi Vijayan said on Friday that NDF had perhaps become an agency recruiting operatives for terror outfits outside the State and that it had started sending such recruits for training outside India.

Police sources said they were focusing more on persons who were not there where they were supposed to be than on people who were obviously there. “Look for the absent factor. That is the way to fix this problem to some extent. This is because there is a strong feeling that those missing are engaged in terror operations somewhere else,” said a police official.

He said a trend of missing of Muslim youth had been noticed of late in the State, especially in Kannur district. Almost all these young men had some links with NDF, he added.

Chettippady village near Parappanangadi in Muslim-majority Malappuram district saw hectic police activity on Friday as they searched for the details of Omar Farooq, a friend and associate of Abdul Raheem, who along with Faiz, a friend of Kannur’s Jaleel, was killed in Kashmir on October 7 by the security forces. Like Raheem, who too hailed from the same village, Omar was also an accused in the case related to the burning of a Tamil Nadu State bus at Kalamassery near Kochi in September 2005.

Omar, who was in Chettippady till October 10, had been missing since then. The police searched Omar’s house as well as a mobile phone shop from where he had arranged for fake identity documents for getting a SIM card.

During the search for Omar at Chettippady, the police found that Raheem’s brother-in-law (sister’s husband) Adul Razaq (26), of Neduva in Parappanagadi, also had been missing for the past 30 months. Razaq’s father had lodged a complaint about this with the Parappanangadi police on October 16.

According to Raheem’s sister, her husband, a hotel worker, had left home almost two-and-a-half years ago to work in Kottakkal in Malappuram district itself. Since then he had been missing. The police, who were examining whether he had any links with extremists, said he too was suspected to have been an NDF worker.