Mohsin Ahmad, an accused IS (Islamic State) member, who was nabbed by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) from Delhi’s Batla House, was on Sunday remanded to one-day NIA custody by a special court here.

Ahmad was produced before the duty magistrate at Patiala House Courts by the probe agency, which sought his seven-day custody. He was arrested on Saturday.

The NIA said that the case has links with several states and they need to take him to other places for the recovery of evidence and arresting his aides.

“Ahmad is a radicalised and active member of IS. He has been arrested for his involvement in the collection of funds for IS from sympathisers in India as well as abroad. He was sending these funds to Syria and other places in the form of cryptocurrency in order to further the activities of IS,” the NIA official said.

The court, however, gave NIA one-day custody and Ahmad will be produced before the main court on Monday.

The NIA had on Saturday conducted searches in the residential premises of the accused in Batla House and in Bihar. He was subsequently arrested in the case pertaining to online and on ground activities of the IS.

The case was registered suo moto by the NIA on June 25. Further investigations in the matter were on.

Batla House, Jamia Nagar

Batla House is a notorious locality in Jamia Nagar area of south Delhi. Jamia Nagar was the scene of the illegal Shaheen Bagh protests and also houses the controversial Jamia Millia Islamia University, students of which were accused of stoking the Delhi riots in 2020. The radical quasi-terrorist organization PFI, whose vision is to Islamize Indian by 2047, has several offices in this area.

This is not the first time that suspected IS terrorists are being arrested from Jamia Nagar. In March 2020, Special cell of Delhi Police had arrested a Kashmiri couple – Jahanazaib Sami (36) and his wife Hina Bashir Beigh (39) – from Jamia Nagar on charges of being Islamic State (IS) workers who were inciting other Muslims to commit acts of terror and carry out violence in name of anti-CAA/NRC demonstrations.

Around one year back, UP anti-terror squad had busted an Islamic conversion factory operating from Batla House. The ringleader, Muhammad Umar Gautam was running his Islamic Dawah Center organization from a multi-storey building in Batla House. He had completed M. A. and Ph. D. in Islamic Studies from Jamia Millia Islamia and also taught at Jamia and then Hamdard University (located a few kms away from Jamia Nagar), before moving to Assam. There, he led an Islamic educational trust run by Deobandi Maulana Badaruddin Ajmal, MP and founder of the Islamist AIUDF party, to impart English and computer skills to madrassa students chosen for dawah (Islamic proselytization) work.

Batla House had first entered public consciousness after Delhi Police Inspector MC Sharma was martyred in a 2008 shootout with IM (Indian Mujahideen) terrorists holed up in the area. That encounter had become part of Indian secular mythology with many parties like Congress, SP, AAP claiming it was ‘fake’ and targeted ‘innocent Muslim boys’. Years later, an IM terrorist who had managed to flee during the encounter was arrested and he confessed that the encounter was genuine.

(With IANS inputs)