The Bengaluru Police averted a major terror plot after arresting five terrorists linked to hardline Islamist outfit Jamaat-e-Islami on Wednesday, reports Times of India. But 5 other terrorists who were part of this 10-man module are still absconding.

The Central Crime Branch unit of the Bengaluru police apprehended the men who were believed to be involved in planning a huge explosion in the city, acting swiftly on intelligence inputs.

“The five accused, identified as Sayed Suhel, Umar, Junaid, Mudasir, and Jahid, were accused in a 2017 murder case and were in Parappana Agrahara Central jail where they came in contact with terrorists,” reported news agency ANI quoting CCB officials.

The accused were released in 2019, after spending 18 months in jail, reports NDTV. It is not known if the murder charge against them was dropped.

After receiving the information, a CCB team traced the location and arrested the suspects, officials said. All the terror suspects are linked to Jamaat-e-Islami, TV reports quoted officials. The five suspected terrorists are from different areas of Karnataka’s capital city, they added.

Police also seized bomb-making materials and weapons from their possession.

Briefing the media, Bengaluru Police Commissioner B Dayananda briefs said the arrested men were part of a 10-member terror module, and 5 suspects were still at large.

While they were in jail for their involvement in a murder case in RT Nagar in Bengaluru, they came in contact with T. Nazeer, a dangerous Laskhar-e-Taiba top terrorist who is main accused in the 2008 Bengaluru serial blast and other terror cases. In 2013, Nazeer was convicted by NIA for recruiting Kerala youths for terror activities in the Kashmir valley.

The Police Commissioner said that Nazeer seems to have radicalised these persons, especially one man Junaid, a resident of RT Nagar, who is absconding and is now abroad.

“The person who is currently abroad activated this module and supplied weapons and other equipment for carrying out certain subversive activities,” Dayananda said.

A huge cache of explosives and weapons – 7 pistols & 45 live rounds, walkie-talkie sets, dagger and 12 mobile sets have been recovered. The accused have confessed that they were planning a blast.

Bharat’s criminal justice system needs deep reform. The higher judiciary keeps patting its own back, calling itself ‘the last hope of the common man’, but the truth is that criminals hardly ever receive deterrent punishment and very often we see reports of criminals out on bail or parole committing other crimes with impunity.

An alert media would dig into how the men accused of murder in 2017 managed to get out of jail? How were they allowed to interact with a known terrorist like T Nazeer in a high-security central prison? Why are hardened terrorists like T Nazeer kept in jail for years on end at the expense of the tax payer, making a mockery of our state, instead of concluding their trials in timebound fashion and executing them if found guilty?

But this is too much to expect from Indian mainstream media like The Quint, which is busy stirring up sympathy for dreaded terrorists like T Nazeer.

This is not the first time that our jails have been proved to be breeding grounds for radicalization. Mohammad Shariq, the key accused in the cooker blast case that took place in Mangaluru last year, is believed to have been radicalised in Belagavi prison by another terror accused who was arrested in connection with the Hyderabad bomb blast case. Similar reports of jihadis lodged in Delhi and other jails radicalizing other criminals have also surfaced.

Islamic terror modules – with affiliation to either home grown (like PFI, JeI, Tablighi Jamaat) hardline outfits, or inspired by foreign groups like IS, AQIS, ABT, LeT – are being busted with frightening frequency all over the country.

The Jamaat-e-Islami link to this terror module will be suppressed from most media outlets. This body which was founded in 1941 by the Islamist ideologue Maulana Syed Abul A’la Maududi in Nizam-ruled Hyderabad state, has inspired Islamist terror movements all over the world. After independence, it split into 3 entities, and its Kashmir wing which came into existence in 1953 has now been banned.

But the pan-Indian Jamaat-e-Islami-Hind is no less dangerous, and this far-right Deobandi group’s mainstreaming is another sign of how our ‘secular’ Republic has failed.