3 held in Mumbai, Mumbra man under scanner since July

The Anti-Terrorism Squad along with National Investigation Agency arrested Mudabbir Mustaq Shaikh from Mumbra and Khan Mohamed Hussein from Mazgaon for their alleged connections with ISIS. NIA has been given custody of Shaikh, who was arrested early on Friday morning, for three days. Hussein’s arrest came later in the evening on Friday. One more person is believed to have been arrested but no information about him was available at the time of going to press. Police sources say that NIA provided the lead to the ATS, which kept a close eye on Shaikh’s activities since July last year. The ATS suspects that Mudabbir may be linked to the indoctrinators of the four Malwani youths.

After losing his job four years ago as a computer programmer, 33-year-old Muddabir Shaikh, who holds a diploma in software, remained unemployed and slowly drifted towards ISIS.

He got married to Uzma six years ago and has two daughters, of which one is a newborn. The family used to keep to themselves. Uzma told the gathered mediapersons that her husband was innocent and would never harm anyone or even thing of doing anything anti-national. His in-laws are also in shock and said they are certain he wouldn’t be involved in something like this. His father in-law said that he was a loving husband and father, who made sure he would pick up his daughter from school everyday. He was deeply religious and offered namaz five times daily. His relatives and friends noticed that he had become introverted over the last few months and was always on his computer. He stopped keeping in touch with his relatives, neighbours and friends.

On Friday at around 3 am, 15 officers from the ATS and NIA barged into Shaikh’s apartment in the Amrut Nagar area of Mumbra. The family had moved from their flat at Nalasopara to Mumbra around the time Shaikh left his job four years ago.

Uzma, who has been inconsolable since the arrest, said “I could not understand what the strangers were doing in my house so late in the night. They took my husband to the kitchen, while two other officers instructed us to wait in the hall. Then they started checking his computer and took three of our mobile phones.”

Uzma further said that her husband left his job because they shifted to Mumbra and he was finding it difficult to commute. “He then started working at home. He used to work for many hours on the computer. When my father would ask me what he was doing for so long on the computer, I didn’t have an answer. Many a times I tried to find out what he was doing, but he just said he was doing some IT related work.”

One of Shaikh’s neighbours said that when the family moved to Mumbra, he had a quarrel with some of the society members as a consequence of which there was a change in the members. “Later, however, he stopped attending meetings and his wife came instead, he said. Details of the other suspect who has been arrested are still awaited.