Two More Held, Five in Remand Till April 6
Vijayawada: Besides arresting three youths on suspicion of terror links, Andhra Pradesh police on Wednesday arrested two more accused and produced them in the city court.
They were sent to judicial detention until April 6.
One more accused, Abdul Salaam, hailing from Bellary in Karnataka, has been detained by AP police and will be brought to the city for questioning.
AP police arrested the fifth accused, Sayeeda Begum, who hailed from Chanchalguda, in Hyderabad and brought her here. Similarly, the ninth accused, Jishan, hailing from Jodhpur, Rajasthan, was arrested and brought to the city.
With the arrest of two suspects, the number of people arrested increased to 5 and all of the suspects were sent to the courthouse.
After three youths were arrested on Tuesday by the Town 2 police in Vijayawada on charges of maintaining terror links, the police registered an FIR accusing a total of 13 people.
These include Rehmatullah Sharif Mohammad (A-1), Mohammad Danish (A-2), Mirza Sohail Baig (A-3), Shadman Dilkash (A-4) from Bihar, Sayeeda Begum (A-5) from Hyderabad, Al Hakim Shukoor (A-6), Lucky Ahmed (A-7) from Delhi, Amanullah Khan (A-8) from Bihar, Jishan (A-9) from Rajasthan, West Mir Ashif Ali (A-10) from Bengal, Abdul Salaam (A-11) from Karnataka, Sharuk Khan (A-12) from Maharashtra and Shaik Fiaz Ur Rehman (A-13) from Maharashtra.
The first defendant, Rehmatullah Sharif Mohammad, admitted to the police in the presence of mediators that he had abandoned his undergraduate studies and started working as a Rapido driver. The accused said that he was a staunch believer of Islam, regularly visited the mosque in Winchipeta and followed the sermons of Israr Ahmad and Jakir Naik.
“I was attracted to radical Islamic ideologies and developed an interest towards banned terrorist organization AQIS,” he said, and added that he searched the social media to find out details about it, He was thus attracted to its ideology
“Then I decided to join Jihad.”
Rahmatullah said that he followed the Instagram IDs of people with terrorist ideology, added Jihad videos and statements of AQIS leader Osama bin Laden and JeM chief Muhammad Masood Azahar and transformed ISIS’s Jihadi slogan into ‘Dawlatul’. He showed Islam Baqiyah as status and highlight on his Instagram accounts.
He said, “I met two accused A-2 and A-3 who had similar interests and founded ‘Al Malik Youth Islamic Committee’ (AMYIC) in 2023 and created a WhatsApp Group, Instagram ID, Group ID, YouTube channel and made Danish (A-2) ‘administrator’ for them.”
Rahmatullah noted that AMYIC’s goals are to: turn India into an Islamic State, destabilize India, support Palestine in the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine, campaign against purchasing products from Israel, and attract more Muslim youth there.
