Three individuals arrested on Monday, allegedly connected to an ISIS module, possess engineering degrees, with one actively pursuing a PhD at Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI), according to the police.
One of the accused had reportedly crafted improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and conducted tests in various locations across Delhi, Rajasthan, and Haldwani in Uttarakhand.
The detainees have been identified as Mohammad Shahnawaz Alam, Mohammad Rizwan Ashraf, and Mohammad Arshad Warsi.
Shahnawaz, a wanted terrorist by the NIA, conducted reconnaissance of potential targets, including crowded areas, shrines (mazar/dargah), and routes used by VIP political leaders in several cities.
Born in Hazaribagh, Jharkhand, Shahnawaz moved to Kota, Rajasthan, for engineering coaching, later earning a BTech in mining from NIT Visveswaraya, Nagpur, in 2016. He arrived in Delhi in 2016 for competitive exams and began following ISIS ideology during his college days.
Shahnawaz married Basanti Patel in Aligarh in March 2021, after which they started producing IEDs in Delhi while seeking contacts for their planned ‘Hijrat’ to Afghanistan.
In 2022, Shahnawaz, Ali, Imran, and Yunus Saaki were apprehended by Pune police during a bike theft, but Shahnawaz escaped. Following foreign-based handler instructions, Shahnawaz and Ali began accumulating materials in Delhi to prepare IEDs.
Accused Warsi, originally from Jharkhand, studied at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) before moving to Delhi in 2016. He completed an MBA in marketing and operations from JMI and was pursuing a PhD in Islamic Principles there. Warsi worked as a physics teacher and provided home tuition in science and mathematics.
The third suspect, Ashraf, hailing from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, earned a BTech in information technology from a Ghaziabad college in 2017. He communicated with the same foreign-based handler as Shahnawaz and Warsi and participated in the conspiracy to carry out terrorist activities in Delhi.
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