Mumbai, May 14 A special court here on Thursday granted the Enforcement Directorate (ED) permission to record statements of 19 alleged ISIS members and sympathizers held in various prisons across India.
Judge R B Rote of the court for Prevention of Money Laundering Act allowed the ED's plea to interrogate these accused "for the sake of proper and effective investigation".
The ED's money laundering probe stemmed from a case registered by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in November 2023.
The NIA probe targeted ISIS members operating in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, leading to the arrest of key figures including Shahnawaz Alam, Mohd Rizwan Ashraf and Mohd Arshad Warsi.
The ED, represented by advocate Arvind Aghav, submitted before the PMLA court that the accused were engaged in a deep-rooted conspiracy to expand the footprint of the terrorist organisation Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in the country.
Late Saqib Nachan was the self-declared head of ISIS in India, the ED claimed.
Nachan was convicted in multiple terror cases, including 2002-2003 Mulund blast case, and after being released from jail in 2017, he was in touch with Sultan Sikander, a foreign-based handler of ISIS Telegram ID, in order to expand the network of ISIS in India, it said.
Anurag Manbir Singh, one of the accused, was the "treasurer" of ISIS in India, the ED told the court.
Nachan and his associates organized weapon and IED training in forest areas near Padgha-Borivali in the Mumbai region, and it had identified suspicious monetary transactions involving several families in the area, the central agency claimed.
The accused were generating money through extortion and other unlawful activities to fund the organization's goals, it said.
The court authorised the ED team to visit various jails including Tihar (Delhi), Arthur Road (Mumbai) and Lucknow Central Jail to conduct the interrogations.
