Delhi Police arrests man with suspected ISIS links

New Delhi :A 28-year-old man with suspected ISIS links was nabbed from Kashmere Gate ISBT here, making it the fifth arrest by Delhi Police in connection with a module of the terror outfit it had claimed to have busted last month.

“The accused, Mohsin Ibrahim Sayyed, was arrested from Kashmere Gate ISBT in north Delhi last night, on the basis of a tip-off from a central intelligence agency. During interrogation, it has emerged that he was about to leave for Syria,” Special Commissioner of Police (Special Cell) Arvind Deep said.

Sayyed is a muezzin at Malad in Mumbai and had come to Delhi to meet an associate, an officer in the Special Cell said.

Intelligence agencies had found that he was also close to one of the 14 men arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) last month in its nationwide crackdown against ISIS, the officer said.

Sayyed was given Rs 1.50 lakh by a person in Lucknow and he was to deliver it to an associate here, the officer claimed, alleging police have found Rs 85,000 from his possession.

A Special Cell team is at present tracking down other members of the network.

According to the police, Sayyed, who is believed to be self-radicalised, was acting as a financier and had allegedly given Rs 50,000 to the four persons who were arrested by Delhi Police from Haridwar last month. All of them were found to have links with a former Indian Mujahideen militant who later went to fight for ISIS, they said.

“Sayyed was particularly in touch with Akhlaq, one of the four persons arrested last month. The police are checking his background records,” Deep said.

Earlier today, he was remanded in police custody till February 10 by a Delhi court.

Delhi Police had last month arrested four persons with suspected ISIS links from Manglour in Uttarakhand and claimed to have unearthed a terror plot targeting the Ardh Kumbh Mela at Haridwar, especially the trains headed there, along with some strategic locations in the national capital.

The suspects were identified as Akhlaq ur-Rehman, Mohammed Osama, Mohammed Azim Shah and Mehroz.

“The arrested persons were allegedly in contact with a former Indian Mujahideen operative, who later went for training in Syria and is presently believed to be a key member of Ansar-ut Tawhid fi Bilad al-Hind (AuT), which has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS),” a police officer had then said, adding that the AuT operative is presently believed to be fighting for ISIS in Syria.

PTI