Zakir Naik's NGO IRF gave scholarship of Rs 80,000 to IS operative Abu Anas: NIA

NEW DELHI: In first direct evidence of linking controversial Islamic preacher Zakir Naik and his NGO Islamic Research Foundation (IRF) with terror activities and its support to ISIS, the National Investigation Agency probe has found that ISIS operative, Abu Anas, arrested from Rajasthan in January this year, was given Rs 80,000 as scholarship by IRF around the time when he was planning to go to Syria to fight alongside the terror outfit.
Sources say that Abu Anas was in regular touch with IRF officer bearers and he was given this amount in the garb of scholarship in October 2015. “This is the time when Anas was planning to travel to Syria,” said a source. The money was transferred by IRF into Anas’s ICICI bank account in Tonk branch, said sources.
A former Information Security Analyst of TWG International at Abids at Hyderabad, Anas was arrested by NIA as part of a multi-city ISIS module in January-February this year. The group, after forming a subsidiary outfit of ISIS in India named – Junood-ul-Khilafa-Fil-Hind (a group seeking to establish caliphate in India with allegiance to the ISIS/ISIL), was planning to carry out strikes in India on the directions of Shafi Armar, Syria based chief of ISIS in India.
Officials say that Anas was part of a JKH module of at least 22 members led by Mumbai based Mudabbir Mushtaq Sheikh, who owed allegiance to ISIS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and decided to carry out violent Jehad in India. The agencies had arrested these recruits in simultaneous raids in different cities including Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Tumkur, Mumbai, Aurangabad etc earlier this year.
The outfit members had interacted on web based social media networks (Facebook, WhatsApp, Trillian, Skype, Surespot, Twitter, Chat Secure, Nimbuzz and Telegram) for the purpose of recruitment, preparation of IEDs, identifying places for training and hideouts and, finally, committing terror strikes at various public places and vital installations in India.
The accused persons had conducted several conspiracy meetings between August 2015 and January 2016 to discuss their plans in which Anas was present alongwith other members.
NIA probe had also revealed that apart from collecting funds through hawala channels for buying explosives, the ISIS members were had also contacted Naxalites to understand their modus operandi in committing terror acts and they also had plans to buy weapons from them.