ISIS man plotted to hit Mother House: NIA

Kolkata: ISIS suspect Mohammad Masihuddin alias Musa had planned to carry out attacks at Mother House in Kolkata to target foreign nationals, according to the chargesheet filed by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Friday.

The Central agency said the 25-year-old resident of Labhpur in Birbhum district considered the Missionaries of Charity headquarters as “a soft target” since it is frequented by American, British and Russian citizens who visit the place to pay homage to its founder Mother Teresa.

“Musa wanted to kill American, British, Russian and other European tourists as retaliation to the offensive against Islamic State in the Middle East,” an NIA official said.

Musa, whom the agency had arrested from Burdwan railway station in July on charges of radicalising youths to join ISIS, reportedly has links to Dhaka-based Jamaat-Ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), whose leader Abu Suleiman had met Musa at the latter’s sister’s wedding in March 2015.

Musa had been questioned over his alleged ties with JMB and about the ISIS network by the Rapid Action Batallion (RAB) of Bangladesh in October and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) earlier this month, respectively.

Musa came under the scanner of Indian investigation agencies after his e-mails and calls were traced to Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Syria. Officials in the NIA say the suspect had been in touch with several IS operatives, including leader Shafi Arman, in Syria through Facebook and Twitter, and was entrusted with building an ISIS module and recruitment base in West Bengal. Musa is currently lodged now in the high-security Alipore Central Jail in Kolkata.

The NIA’s findings have prompted the Kolkata police to tighten the security arrangements in and around the Mother House.