Bengaluru: A major mystery has been solved and it was found that the Islamic State of Tamil Nadu was behind the killing of a special sub-inspector.

One Wednesday, the 57-year-old special sub-inspector was shot dead at a checkpost near Kaliyakkavilai in Tamil Nadu at around 9.30 pm. His body had stab injuries too and the police have identified the two killers as Abdul Shamim and Thowfic from Kanyakumari.

Revenge:

The killing of Wilson was an act of revenge. It was a message that these persons wanted to convey to the Tamil Nadu police, who were instrumental in targeting members of this terror group.

Shamim’s associates, Mohammad Haneef Khan, Imran Khan and Mohammad Zaid were arrested in Bengaluru by the Tamil Nadu Police. This act of killing a police man was to send a message.

The case originally relates to the killing of Hindu Munnani leader KP Suresh Kumar, near Chennai, five years ago. The Tamil Nadu Police had launched investigations and even arrested several Muslim youth in connection with the case.

The CCTV grabs show that the duo had reached the checkpost and shot Wilson. After the killing, the two ran into a Jamaat office close by and slipped out through the back door.

Modus operandi:

Police sources told MyNation that this is a group operating in Tamil Nadu and its members are highly radicalised. The targeting of a cop has come as a shock to the force, since this appears to be a new modus operandi. It is very similar to the modus operandi of the Base Movement in Kerala, which had prepared a hit-list of judges, policemen and Hindu leaders. 

The Base Movement had listed those judges, who had refused bail to terrorists. The police who had investigated these cases were also on the hit list. This group in Tamil Nadu, who follows the ideology of the Islamic State and is very rabid in nature.

Further, the police have also been on the trail of this group for the murder of Hindu leaders. Those Hindu leaders who have been fighting against radicalisation and forced Islamic conversion have been the target of this group.

This group like the Base Movement also has law enforcers and their modus operandi now is to send a strong message to those coming after them, police sources also say.

Radicalisation:

In 2017, the National Investigation Agency registered a case against two persons - Moideen and Fakruddin. Moideen has been accused of creating a module of the Islamic State in Cuddalore. He had also radicalised and facilitated Haja Fakkrudin to join the Islamic State in Syria.

NIA officers say that Moideen has played a vital role in radicalising several youth. This group, behind the killing of Wilson and K P Suresh Kumar, was set up by Moideen and the Muslim youth handpicked by him. Moideen has been absconding for long and it is also suspected that he may have gone to Nepal. His last known locations were Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and West Bengal. He had however managed to give the police the slip on every occasion.

Moideen, according to the NIA, is an extremely radical and dangerous operative. He believes in violent jihad. During investigations, the police had also stumbled upon several country made revolvers in Bengaluru. It belonged to this group and they had planned on carrying out mass killings of law enforces and Hindu leaders, the police revealed.

Moideen had picked youth from Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka. After picking youth, he would brainwash them and also put them in touch with Islamic preachers who in turn would radicalise them. 

Pattern:

This breakthrough comes close on the heels of the Gujarat Anti Terrorism Squad arresting

Zafar Ali Mohammad Haliq, a member of the Islamic State of Tamil Nadu and a resident of Cuddalore.

He too is part of the same module that targeted the Hindu Munnani leader and Wilson. The ATS picked him after intelligence reports suggested that he had infiltrated the state. Haliq was in fact part of a six member gang, which was trying to establish Jihadi modules in various parts of the country. The ATS learnt that on the anvil was the setting up of modules in Gujarat and plans to target Hindu leaders.

Over the past two years, the police of various states have found that there is a major plan in place to specifically target Hindu leaders. Last year, the NIA took over a probe into the killing of an RSS leader from Punjab, Jagdish Gagnega. During the investigation, the NIA found that the Khalistan Liberation Force was behind the systematic killing of Hindu leaders between 2016 and 2017.

In another instance, the Gujarat Police busted a module of the Dawood Ibrahim gang, which had undertaken murders of Hindu leaders. Two Hindu leaders, Pragnesh Mistry and Shirish Bengali, were killed by this module which was set up close Dawood aide, Javed Chikna. During the probe it was learnt that they had prepared a hit-list comprising the names of VHP leader, Viral Desai, a priest, Jayakar Maharaj and Shirish Bengali’s brother-in-law, Prakash Modi.

If one looks at these probes, it becomes clear that there has been an international conspiracy to strike at the Hindu leaders in India. In Punjab case, it was found that the funds had come in from Italy and Canada. In the Gujarat case, the funding was from Pakistan and Dubai. In the Tamil Nadu case, the funds had come in from the UAE and there was a module that was assisting the growth and spread of the Islamic State of Tamil Nadu.