Daijiworld Media Network - Bengaluru (MS)

Bengaluru, Jan 13: In the charge sheet that is filed at the court by the National Investigating Agency (NIA), chilling evidence of the acts of terror outfit 'Base Movement' of Al-Qaeda in Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), who created panic by placing bombs in premises of five courts, has been highlighted. These details were unearthed during the inquiry of the members of this group, who have been arrested in this connection.

Six SIM cards for duplicate voter id

It is really interesting to know how one voter identity card that was forged from the internet and used to purchase six SIM cards could help the terrorists coordinate and carry out the deadly attack on the premises of five different courts.

Malappuram court bomb blast

Abbas Ali, mastermind of Base Movement outfit needed duplicate SIM cards in order to publish the details of the organization and also to hide his identity. Technical expert of the group, Dawood Suleiman, who was an engineer with a private firm in Chennai, downloaded a voter identity card from the Google search and prepared three voter ids with different addresses. The same was used to buy six SIM cards and four mobile phones.

The five accused were using these SIM cards and mobiles alternately among themselves. A Facebook account was also opened using these duplicate mobile numbers.

Mobile recharge of just Rs 20 was the undoing

When the NIA tried to arrest the culprits based on the details of the mobile number, the address that was recorded against the mobile number was that of an innocent person. However, when the team checked the call detail record (CDR) of this number which was starting from the digit 9, they hit on an important source of information of a recharge done for Rs 20 on the same number. This helped the investigating team to crack the case.

Base Movement, which knew about the impact social sites create on the society had opened a duplicate Facebook account in order to give astonishing details of all their bomb attacks. In addition, they used the Whatsapp group of public servants including the 'Namo WhatsApp' group of prime minister Modi as per the details that have been gathered by the NIA during the investigation.

This terror outfit used to publish details before carrying out the bomb attack on their Facebook account 'Mohammed....Mohammed' and also share the same on the different WhatsApp groups which it had a connection with. Surprisingly, no one took their posts seriously and even the police were not informed of these posts.

It is suspected that the accused must have operated many Facebook accounts and it is learnt that NIA has sent a letter to the Facebook office in USA to give details including Internet protocol (IP) address of such accounts. However, so far there is no response from the Facebook office.

Mobile number helps in arresting the accused

NIA had recovered some letters and pen drives belonging to Base Movement terror outfit from the site of Malappuram court bomb blast incident that took place on November 1, 2016. When the investigating team cracked the details in the pen drive, they got the details of the previous four bomb blasts that were carried out by the group and also one duplicate Facebook account and the mobile number from which the threatening call was sent to the police commissioner of Cochin.

A blank message was sent to the mobile number of Abbas Ali (mastermind of Base movement outfit) on August 1, 2016, the day of the Mysuru court bomb blast. This number was in switch-off mode after this date. However, it was showing the location as Cochin on November 1, 2016. Based on this important clue, the sleuths arrested Mohammed Ayub, a resident of K Pudoor of Madurai, who is the third accused in this case on November 28, 2016. The details revealed by Ayub eventually led to the arrest of the other five main accused in this case.