Hyderabad: The NIA added in the chargesheet: “During the course of investigation it was found that the accused persons formed an organisation by name of Junood-ul-Khilafa-Fil-Hind (a group seeking to establish a caliphate in India with allegiance to ISIS/ISIL) to recruit Muslim youths to work for ISIS.

“The group was acting at the behest of ISIS India chief Yousuf-al-Hindi alias Shafi Armar alias Anjan Bhai, who is based in Syria and is purportedly the media chief of ISIS. In the investigation it has been confirmed that Shafi Armar had contacted and interacted on web-based social media networks like Facebook, WhatsApp, Trillians, Skype, Surespot, Twitter, Chat Security, Nimbus and Telegram with the accused.”

He was in touch with the accused for the purpose of recruitment, preparation of IEDs, identifying places for training and hideouts and finally committed terror strikes. The accused had conducted several meetings at the house of Mohammed Shareef, one of the accused, in Hyderabad on December 15 in 2015 and January 15, 2016. They had also conducted meetings at Devaranya Dargah state forest Tumkuru, Deoband and Bengaluru.

The chargesheet has been filed against the terror suspects under criminal conspiracy, sections of Unlawful Activities Prevention Act and the Explosive Substances Act.

The chargesheet has been filed against 16 persons — Mohammed Nafees Khan, Mudabbir Musthaq Shaik of Mumbai, Abu Anas, Janmal Huda, Mohammed Afzal, Mohammed Shareef Moinuddin Khan, Suhail Ahmed, Asif Ali, Mohammed Obedulla Khan, Mohammed Aleem, Mohammed Hussain Khan, Mufti Abdus Sami Qasmi and against absconding Shafi Armar, a native of Bhatkal in Karnataka. Two of the accused have turned approvers and have been granted conditional pardon by the trial court.

NIA ends quizzing of Yazdhani brothers
NIA officials took one of the arrested ISIS men into custody on Tuesday for grilling in connection with the terror conspiracy case. NIA sleuths took Ataullah Rahman, 30, from Bandlaguda, into custody for five days to quiz him in detail.

Meanwhile, NIA sent back the Yazdhani brothers to judicial custody after finishing interrogation on Tuesday. Mohammed Ilyas Yazdani and Mohammed Ibrahim Yazdani were produced in court before sending them back to prison. On July 12, the court had extended police custody for eight days.

Ataullah Rahman, who is now being grilled by NIA officials, had radicalised other ISIS men by preaching the IS ideology to them. After motivating the group with propaganda, he made the group do Bayah, the oath of allegiance, to IS chief Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, officials said.

NIA had formally arrested Rahman on July 12 after collecting evidence against him and he was lodged in judicial custody. NIA officials need to extract more information on his connections with ISIS handlers in Syria, who had reportedly provided him propaganda material.