The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Thursday carried out searches at six locations in Tamil Nadu in connection with a plot by an IS-inspired group to murder leaders of Hindu organisations. A police officer said that the NIA was probing into the conspiracy to kill Hindu Makkal Katchi leader Arjun Sampath and his son Omkar by the Islamic State-inspired groups. The NIA was alerted by the local police in July about the plot.
Reportedly, the NIA was carrying searches at six locations including two locations at Coimbatore beside one each in Elayangudi, Trichy, Kayalpattinam and Nagapattinam. A five-member team carried out searches in the house of Nissar in GM Nagar and Sauridin in Lorrypet in the Coimbatore, police said.
Read: NIA raids houses of 7 persons linked to ISIS for plotting to kill Hindu leaders in Tamil Nadu
In September last year, a Special Investigation Unit of the Coimbatore police had foiled a plot by seven-members of an IS-inspired Islamic group in Tamil Nadu to murder Sampath, Hindu Munnani leader Mookambikai Mani and Sakthi Sena leader Anbu Mari.
Since then NIA has been working and collecting intelligence in various cities of south India and looking into activities of suspected radical youths.
The NIA officials stated that Tamil Nadu tops the list of Indian states where anti-terror agencies have unearthed modules of Salafi jihadi terrorist organization IS over a period of five years since 2014. The NIA has claimed to have arrested 127 IS sympathisers from across India since 2014 and 33 were from Tamil Nadu.
Read: NIA raids UP madrasa in connection with a terror suspect who used to study there
Lately, Coimbatore has become a hub of Islamic terror as in July the NIA had nabbed an Islamic state module after they had conducted raids on several locations in the city. The arrested terror sympathisers were in touch with Zahran Hashim, the main accused in the Sri Lanka bombings, over Facebook.