Rajkot: A local court today sent the alleged ISIS operative brothers, Vaseem Ramodia and Naeem Ramodia to Rajkot central jail in judicial custody as the Anti Terrorist Squad (ATS) of Gujarat police which nabbed them last month from Rajkot and Bhavnagar did not seek their remand any-further even as no advocate turned up for them in the court for the third consecutive time.

Earlier during their first and second production in the court here on February 27 and March 10, the court had granted 12 and 10 days of remand to the ATS respectively.

Today the ATS produced them in the court but did not sought their remand.

Interestingly no advocate appeared for them in the court today as well in the wake of the boycott call given by the local bar association against the ‘traitors’.

ATS DySP B H Chavda said that the interrogation by the ATS and other agencies including the NIA has been done.

‘NIA had interrogated them and if the need be they would take up the investigation,’ the DySP said.

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

The telephone conversation audio clips between the two brothers had revealed that they were very eager to carry out a successful terror attack as soon as possible to ‘prove their point’ to their 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 failed bomb attacks on shops here. They wanted to avenge the killings of their Muslim brethren. The ATS has 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. They had also planned to go to Kashmir to join the Jehadis in war against India and later to Syria via Turkey.

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