Bengaluru: NIA arrests 28-year-old doctor for alleged ISIS links
Bengaluru: An ophthalmologist has been arrested by the NIA for his alleged connection with the banned terror outfit Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP).
The National Investigation Agency said that 28-year-old Abdur Rahman, a resident of Basavanagudi in the city, was arrested on August 17.
The case was initially registered by the Delhi Police Special Cell in March 2020 after the arrest of a Kashmiri couple Jahanzaib Sami Wani and his wife Hina Bashir Beigh from Okhla Vihar, Jamia Nagar in Delhi, NIA said in a statement.
The couple were found to have affiliations with ISKP, a banned terrorist organisation and a part of ISIS and involved in subversive and anti-national activities.
They were also found to be in touch with Abdullah Basith, who was already lodged in Tihar jail in another NIA case (ISIS Abu Dabhi Module), the NIA said.
The agency said that during further investigation, it arrested two more people, who are residents of Pune," for being part of the conspiracy to further the activities of ISIS/ISKP in India and to carry out subversive activities in the garb of anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protests."
Rahman, the NIA said, had confessed to having conspired with Sami and other Syria-based ISIS operatives on secure messaging platforms to further ISIS activities, adding that he was in the process of developing a medical application to help the injured ISIS cadres in the conflict-zones and weaponry - related application for the benefit of ISIS fighters.
"Significantly, he had visited an ISIS medical camp in Syria in early 2014 for treatment of ISIS terrorists and stayed with Islamic State operatives for 10 days and returned to India," the NIA stated.
After his arrest, NIA searched three of his premises in Bengaluru with the assistance of Karnataka Police and seized digital devices, mobile phone, laptop containing incriminating material.
The agency said it would produce Rahman before the NIA Special Court at New Delhi and seek remand for his custodial interrogation. It's investigations would continue, the agency said.
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Congress using hijab issue to pacify minority anger, alleges Karnataka LoP R Ashoka
Bengaluru: Leader of Opposition in the Assembly R. Ashoka has accused the Congress government of using the hijab issue to placate what he described as discontent among minority voters after the Davanagere by-election.
In a post on X on Wednesday, Ashoka alleged that the state government, instead of addressing issues such as price rise, corruption, farmers’ distress and law and order, was attempting to retain its minority vote base by reviving the hijab issue.
Referring to the 2022 dress code introduced by the BJP government, which prohibited hijab in schools and colleges, Ashoka said the Karnataka High Court had upheld the policy and emphasised the importance of discipline in educational institutions.
He questioned the Congress government’s move to revisit the issue and asked whether setting aside the court-backed policy to benefit one community could be described as secularism.
Ashoka further alleged that while the government was willing to permit hijab, it continued to prohibit saffron shawls.
He accused the government of dividing students on religious lines rather than treating schools and colleges as spaces of equality.
Drawing a comparison with Mamata Banerjee’s government in West Bengal, Ashoka claimed that excessive appeasement politics had harmed the state and warned that the Congress in Karnataka could face a similar political response.
He said voters in Karnataka would teach the Congress a lesson for what he termed “vote-bank politics” and for compromising constitutional and judicial principles.
