Rajkot: A local court here today allowed 10 more days of remand of the the two alleged ISIS operative brothers, Vaseem Ramodia and Naeem Ramodia to the Anti Terrorist Squad (ATS) of Gujarat police who were nabbed by the squad last month from Rajkot and Bhavnagar even as no advocate turned up for them in the court for the second consecutive time.

The Court had on February 27 allowed 12 days remand of them to the ATS which ended today.

They were brought here and produced in the court which allowed further remand of 10 days ie till March 20. The ATS had sought 14 days remand.

ATS claimed that it needed to interrogate them further and investigate the matter. It was also revealed that the two brothers under the influence of ISIS had also planned to go to Kashmir to join the Jehadis in war against India and then to go to Turkey and Syria.

Interestingly no advocate turned up for them amid the boycott call by Rajkot Bar Association and their ultimatum about it. The local advocates were unhappy with the development and some of them even chanted anti ISIS slogans during the production of the two brothers in the court today. The advocates have warned that they won’t allow any outside advocate to plead for the ‘traitors’.

A team of ATS is also likely to go to Uttar Pradesh to interrogate the 3 other ISIS operatives nabbed from Kanpur in connection with a bomb blast in a train in Madhya Pradesh. One of their aides Saifulla was killed in the sensational encounter in Lucknow recently.
The team would interrogate the nabbed operatives to see whether there was any link between them and the two ISIS operative brothers nabbed in Gujarat.

Earlier Gujarat ATS had nabbed Vaseem (30) from Rajkot while Naeem (28) was caught from Bhavnagar.

The telephone conversation audio clips between the two brothers have revealed that they were very eager to carry out a successful 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 the two brothers 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