Ahmedabad/Rajkot: A team of National Investigation Agency (NIA) is likely to come to Gujarat soon to interogate the two alleged ISIS operative brothers, Vaseem Ramodia and Naeem Ramodia nabbed by the Gujarat ATS today from Rajkot and Bhavnagar a few days ago.

ATS DySP B H Chavda today said that the NIA along with other agencies would come for the investigation.

To a query he said that as per the information available now, the NIA was not going to take over the investigation of the matter.

The two brothers have been taken on remand by the ATS till March 10.

(NIA) is a central agency established by the central government to combat terror in India. It acts as the Central Counter Terrorism Law Enforcement Agency. and is empowered to deal with terror related crimes across states without special permission from the states. The Agency came into existence with the enactment of the National Investigation Agency Act 2008 by the Parliament of India in December 2008. It was created after the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks as need for a central agency to combat terrorism was realised.

It is learnt that it has been revealed during the interrogation of the two ISIS operative brothers that dozens of the sympathizers and operatives of the terror outfit were present across Gujarat and Rajasthan. A team of Rajasthan ATS is also likely to come to Gujarat for investigation. A book written by a former convict of Akshardham temple attack was also found from their possesion.

Meanwhile, family members of the two brothers including their parents were also summoned by the ATS in the Rajkot rural police office today. The passports of the tow brothers and their family members were also investigated by the ATS for investigation. It has also been revealed that Vaseem had planned to to go to Syria via Turkey.

Vaseem (30) was nabbed from here while Naeem (28) was caught from Bhavnagar.

They had reportedly confessed about their terror intention in the court yesterday.
The telephone conversation audio clips between the two brothers have revealed that they were very eager to carry out a succesful terror attack as soon as possible to ‘prove their point’ to his ISIS handler. In one of the clips Vaseem is even heard to be complaining about the ‘slow pace’ of ISIS chief Abu Bakar Al Baghdadi. They had tried to hack one person to death in Chotila while attempted faile bomb attacks on shops here. They wanted to avenge the killings of their Muslim brethren.

The ATS has reportedly sent the evidences and materials including the clips of their conversation with their handler, gunpowder, laptop, mobile phones and various downloaded materials including IED (bomb) making procedure, ISIS related info and literature recovered from them during late-night raids of February 25 from Bhavnagar and Rajkot, to forensic science laboratory (FSL) for various tests and corroboration.The duo have been booked under section 121 of the IPC ( Waging, or attempting to wage war, or abetting waging of war, against the Government of India.) which has provision of capital punishment and life imprisonment, and 120 B (criminal conspiracy) and other relevant sections of various acts.

Primary investigation revealed that they had come in contact with ISIS operatives online through various social medial like the Facebook, Telegram, Instagram, Imo, Whatsapp etc around 2-3 years ago and become influenced by their ideology and were in touch with some handler, who is yet to be identified. The ATS was keeping a watch on them for the past around 3 months and when their activities become more serious It was decided to nab them.They had tried some ‘lone wolf’ (doing it alone) terror attacks including hacking someone to death in Chotila and torching some vehicles but had not succeeded. Had they been successful, they could have been taken in to the ‘inner circle’ of the ISIS.

The father of the duo Arif Ramodia, a retired employee of Saurashtra university is a popular local umpire associated with SCA and have done umpiring in numerous district level matches.

DeshGujarat