On Monday, the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), along with the Thane Rural Police, carried out large-scale searches in the Padgha area near Bhiwandi in Thane district. The police searched several places, including the homes of families and relatives of people arrested earlier in terror-related cases. Sources said the authorities took this action as a precaution to prevent any possible terrorist activity in the region. The raids began early on Monday, around 4 am, and continued until the afternoon. More than 250 police officers, including 20 teams from the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), took part in the operation. Acting on specific intelligence inputs, they searched 22 different locations.
According to the ATS, the search operation began after they received reliable information that some radical individuals, who support Saquib Abdul Hamid Nachan, had regrouped and were planning anti-national activities. Nachan is a former leader of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and is one of the main accused in the ISIS Maharashtra module case. Based on these inputs, the ATS launched the operation to prevent any possible threats. Various news reports suggest that Nachan was in the process of appointing ministers for a parallel government in the Padgha region.
Who Is Saquib Nachan?
The main target of the raids, ATS conducted on Monday, was the house of family members of terror suspect Saquib Nachan, who the NIA claims is the head of the Maharashtra module of ISIS. Authorities booked Nachan in over a dozen terror-related cases. Security forces have kept him under their radar since the 1990s. Courts convicted him twice for planning terror attacks with Khalistani terrorists in the early 1990s. The Supreme Court convicted him once in 1997 for these activities. Then, in 2016, a Mumbai court sentenced him to 10 years under the Arms Act after booking him in connection with the 2002-03 terror blasts in Mumbai. He served his sentence and was released in 2017.
In 2023, as part of their continued crackdown on the ISIS terrorist network, the NIA made significant progress by conducting a series of raids across Maharashtra and Karnataka, resulting in the arrest of 15 terrorists. According to the security services, Nachan was the leader who was responsible for administering the ‘bayath’ (oath of allegiance) to newly recruited members.
At that time, NIA seized significant amounts of unaccounted cash, firearms, sharp-edged weapons, incriminating documents, smartphones, and other digital devices during these raids. These actions were part of the NIA’s ongoing efforts to disrupt and thwart the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis), also known as the Islamic State, from carrying out violent acts of terror and endangering innocent lives.
The investigating officers found that he and his team, motivated by the ideologies of violent jihad, Khilafat, and ISIS, sought to disturb the peace and communal harmony of the country. In 2023, itself Nachan has self-declared the village of Padgha in rural Thane as a “liberated zone” and as “Al-Sham”. They encouraged vulnerable Muslim youths to relocate to Padgha to strengthen the base. Both Nachan and his son Shamil were arrested by anti-terror agencies in the ISIS module case.
Moved SC To Quash Notifications Against ISIS
In 2024, while still in jail, he approached the Supreme Court challenging the government notifications that declared ISIS a terrorist organisation. He sought to quash both notifications that officially designated the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and its affiliates as terrorist groups.
Why Nachan Target Padgha?
According to NIA, the Maharashtra ISIS module had self-declared the village of Padgha as a ‘liberated zone’. The terror suspects were trying to persuade young Muslim men to move to Padgha in order to strengthen their base in the area. During earlier raids by the NIA in Padgha and the nearby Borivali area, it was discovered that members of the ISIS Maharashtra module were operating from there. They had set up plans in that region to spread fear and carry out violent attacks across India.
