Third-year engineering student Mir Anas Ali has been arrested in Tamil Nadu for planning a terror attack after contacting terror outfit IS (Islamic State).
He was arrested after a nationwide search in 29 locations was conducted by several Intelligence units. Ali belongs to Ambur, Tirupathur district and is a student in a private engineering college. Ambur Police had reportedly been watching his movements for several months after getting information based on a tip.
On Thursday, he was arrested by the police and a case was registered under sections 121, 122, 125 of IPC and 18, 18A, 20, 38 and 39 under UAPA against Mir Anas Ali.
As per an India Today report, Ali was in contact with IS terrorists and was getting ready for a terror attack involving setting bombs in sensitive areas, murdering a VIP in Vellore to spread terror. “He had used Telegram and other secure chat platforms for communication”, said police sources.
A few days back, two men had been arrested from Erode district for links with IS. One of them, Asif Muzabdin (32) aka Abu Talha, was close to carrying out a lone-wolf attack against targets like Hindu temples, Hindu leaders and police stations, and was in regular touch with ISIS terrorists in Afghanistan and Syria.
The arrests in Erode came after food delivery executive Akhtar Hussain from Assam was arrested in Bengaluru for radicalizing youth on behalf of Al Qaeda , and another man Adil working in a garment factory was picked up from Salem.
Deep roots of Islamism in TN
The Muslim-majority town of Ambur is a hotbed of Islamic radicalism. In 2015, the town had witnessed a large Islamist mob attack (instigated by MMK MLA Aslam Basha) on police, injuring 42 police personnel and leading to molestation of many woman constables, some of whom were reduced to tears due to the sheer brutality they faced.
Most people in the rest of the country are unaware of how deeply embedded the Islamist virus has become in Tamil Nadu. Here is a summary of the rise of Islamism in Tamil Nadu politics, a gift of Nehruvian secularism and Western Indology inspired Dravidianism –
“MH Jawahirullah (founder of dreaded terror organization Al Umma) ‘broke away’ from Al Umma to found the Tamil Nadu Muslim Munnetra Kazhagam (TMMK) in 1995. TMMK is projected as an NGO doing social charity and supposedly abjures electoral politics although it describes itself as a mass-based organization. Breaking away from TMMK, P. Jainulabudeen founded Tamil Nadu Towheed Jamaat (TNTJ), also a mass-based organization, and also supposedly not in the electoral arena.
In 2009, MH Jawahirullah formed a political party, the Manithaneya Makkal Katchi (MMK), which in alliance with the ruling AIADMK won two of the three assembly seats it contested in 2011. Jayalalithaa’s electoral alliance with MH Jawahirullah’s MMK, which is the front office for TMMK and TNTJ, has been the single most potent cause for the rising aggression of jihadis in Tamil Nadu’s public life beginning 2011 when the AIADMK dislodged the DMK to form the government in the state.”
Many Muslim youth from Tamil Nadu have either joined or tried to join IS. The first known ISIS recruit in India, Haja Fakruddin is from Cuddalore in Tamil Nadu. A photo of Muslim youth from TN wearing wearing ISIS shirts and giving the trademark one-fingered ISIS salute while standing in front of the ‘Periya Pallivasal’ (Big Mosque) in Ramanathapuram district had gone viral in 2014.
