Delhi court awards varying jail terms to 13 ISIS operatives

New Delhi: A Delhi court Friday awarded varying jail terms to 13 persons for being the members of terror organisation ISIS and hatching a criminal conspiracy to establish its base in India by recruiting Muslim youths through different social media platforms to carry out acts of terrorism in the country.
Special Judge Parveen Singh sent Nafees Khan to jail for 10 years while three convicts got seven-year jail term each and one person was awarded six year imprisonment.

The court also awarded five year jail term to eight other convicts, their advocate Qausar Khan said.

Those awarded seven-year jail term were Abu Anas, Mufti Abdul Sami Qasmi and Mudabbir Mushtaq Sheikh, while Amjad Khan was sent to jail for six years.

The convicts who were awarded five years' jail term are; Obedullah Khan, Najmul Huda, Mohd Afzal, Suhail Ahamed, Mohd Aleem, Moinudeen Khan, Asif Ali and Syed Mujahid.

The judge awarded the punishment for various offence punishable under sections 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC, and provisions of the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and Explosive Substances Act after the convicts pleaded guilty.

While pleading guilty, the accused told the court that they were "remorseful for the acts alleged against them", and undertook not to indulge in similar acts and activities in future.

Advocate Khan had further told the court that the accused wanted to return to the mainstream society and rehabilitate themselves.

"The accused are having clean antecedents, even their conduct in jail are satisfactory and there is nothing adverse against them. The accused are pleading guilty voluntarily without any pressure, threat, coercion, inducement or undue influence and he that he understands the consequences," their plea had said.

The case, registered by the NIA on December 9, 2015 under relevant sections of the IPC and the UA(P) Act, pertains to the larger criminal conspiracy hatched by the ISIS to establish its base in India by recruiting Muslim youths for the proscribed terror group through different social media platforms, the NIA said.

The accused had formed Junood-ul-Khilafa-Fil-Hind organisation, seeking to establish a caliphate in India and pledging allegiance to ISIS, to recruit Muslim youths to work for the ISIS and commit acts of terrorism in India at the behest of Syria-based Yusuf-Al-Hindi who is purportedly the media chief of ISIS, the NIA said.

The NIA filed chargesheets against the accused persons in 2016-2017.

This case was first of its kind in which terrorist conspiracy of this magnitude involving online radicalisation was effected on cyber space in the aftermath of declaration of Islamic Caliphate by ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2014, the NIA had said.