The Kerala High Court has upheld the conviction of Riyas Aboobakar under sections 38 and 39 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, and section 120 of the Indian Penal Code, as per reports. The HC found Aboobakar guilty of propagating ISIS ideology and calling for violence against non-Muslims.
A bench of justices Raja Vijayaraghavan V and Jobin Sebastian upheld the conviction order passed by the NIA court in Ernakulam, Kerala earlier. However, the high court has reduced the sentence of 10 years of rigorous imprisonment to 8 years.
The case against Riyas Aboobakar pertains to a 2016 case by NIA where dozens of people from Kerala were found having travelled to Afghanistan to join ISIS. Aboobakar was found to have been in contact with the missing persons, and spreading the ISIS ideologies among those in contact with him. He was also found to have been in contact with ISIS terrorist Zahran Hashim, the mastermind of the 2019 Easter blasts in Sri Lanka.
Riyas was arrested by the NIA on May 15, 2018. The NIA investigation had also found that Riyas was in touch with Abdullah Rashid, the ISIS-inspired recruiter who had led a team of Kerala’s wannabe jihadis to Afghanistan. Rashid was killed in US drone bombings while working for ISIS in Afghanistan somewhere in 2019. Rashid’s second wife Yasmeen was caught and sentenced in India to 7 years in jail for running ISIS recruitment.
Riyas was caught by authorities in India while he was trying to collect explosives to carry out a suicide blast under instructions from Abdullah Rashid.
