Delhi court gives NIA 12-day custody of 10 members of ISIS-styled terror group

A Delhi court has given the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) custody of the 10 persons arrested in the raids on Wednesday for 12 days. The 10 are suspected of being part of an ISIS-style outfit that was preparing a string of terrorist attacks at a number of places in Delhi and other parts of northern India.

The court also allowed the families of five of the suspects to meet them inside the court premises.

Sixteen members of the group called 'Harkat ul Harb e Islam', which loosely translates into war for the cause of Islam, had been detained in Wednesday’s raids. Of these, 10 had been arrested – 5 from Amroha and 5 from Seelampur and Jafrabad localities in northeast Delhi. The other six are being interrogated, and more arrestes are likely in connection with the case, the NIA has said.

NIA, India’s top anti-terrorism agency, had carried out the raids at 17 places in and around the national capital with the help of the Delhi Police Special Cell and the Uttar Pradesh Anti-Terrorism Squad. The 17 locations were spread out across Delhi and Western Uttar Pradesh.

The raids seized a locally-made rocket launcher, material for suicide vests and 112 alarm clocks to be used as timers were recovered from the searches, said NIA Inspector General Alok Mittal. "They were planning to make not one but a large number of bombs which is evident from 112 alarm clocks recovered by us," he said.

"The members were in an advanced stage of preparation. They were just waiting for the successful assembly of bombs and wanted to hit multiple locations using remote controlled IEDs and pipe bombs and carry out fidayeen attacks using suicide vests when needed," Mittal added.

The "highly-radicalised module" of youths in the age group of 20-35 is completely self-funded and no criminal antecedent of its members had surfaced so far, he said.