The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has recovered Internet chats between Indian Mujahideen (IM) members in India and Pakistan and revealed that an IM operative had struggled to choose between several terror outfits like a youngster has to between his career options.
Over a year ago, Abdul Khader Sultan Armar, 39, had a career conflict when he had to choose whether he wants to join the jihadists in Syria, or fight for al-Qaeda, or go to Afghanistan, or Nepal to plot terror attacks from there. However, at the end, he chose none of these options and decided to stay back in Pakistan, where he allegedly leads a terror outfit of his own, according to The Indian Express report.
The NIA investigation report suggested that he is now known as Maulana Abdul Rehman al-Nadwi al-Hindi and has become the cleric and the leader of Pakistan based Ansar ul-Tawhid ul-Hind.
Abdul recently expressed his loyalty to Islamic State's 'Caliph' Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and took an online oath last week.
The chats recovered by the NIA were exchanged between Sultan Armar, his brother Shafi Armar, key IM founder Riyaz Bhatkal, Yasin Bhatkal and Asadullah Akhtar, within the period of November 2012 and August 2013.
With the help of the US and the UK based cyber experts and chat service providers, NIA extracted conversations between these five IM members after Yasin and Asadullah were arrested on 29 August 2013.
"New chat addresses were exchanged through encrypted files or by statements in secret coded language, understandable only by the operatives," NIA mentioned in the chargesheet.
Along with Abdul's career dilemma, the chats revealed how these five members parted ways with each other and joined different terror groups.
Though in the chats, Riyaz had expressed that IM will join hands with al-Qaeda after 8-12 months, Sultan broke his alliance with Riyaz and Iqbal Bhatkal and joined al-Qaeda, as many of the IM members were then sceptical about Riyaz's intentions.
Lastly, IM's Pakistan based group broke into two different terror outfits—group headed by Sultan and Afeef Mota swore allegiance to the ISIS and Azamgarh group, including Mirza Shadab Beg joined al-Qaeda.
