Yasin Bhatkal chats show Indian Mujahideen planned to plant nuclear bomb in Surat town: NIA

New Delhi [India], April 3 : A special court of NIA Delhi has ordered the framing of charges against banned organization Indian Mujahideen's (IM) co-founder Yasin Bhatkal and others and noted that Bhatkal's chat with other co-accused reflected that IM was planning to plant a nuclear bomb in Surat town and evacuate Muslims from the town before executing the terrorist act.
While framing charges, court noted that Yasin Bhatkal was repeatedly involved in terror activities to wage war against India.
This court need not go into an elaboration of contents of the said chat, however minute analysis of the chat running into many pages would clearly show that Yasin Bhatkal was not only involved with other accused for carrying out earlier terrorist activities but also involved in the conspiracy of future terrorist activities with the assistance of Maoists in Nepal to collect arms and ammunition.
The court further noted that the witnesses' statement was attributable to Yasin Bhatkal being involved continuously since beginning in a larger conspiracy of committing different terrorist activities to create terror and destabilize the society as a whole.
Court further noted that after the arrest of Yasin Bhatkal certain digital devices were recovered. Extraction report of the data in digital devices seized from Yasin, as per the report of the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) show that many folders contained video clips of jihadi literature including writings for justifying the killing of non-Muslims, in the name of jihad.
Videos of Taliban and Al Qaida on the necessity of violent jihad as well as documents, images, and videos containing literature regarding the making of explosives, IED clearly show that Yasin Bhatkal was involved not only in a larger conspiracy for committing terrorist activities but also instrumental in preparing of IEDs and explosives, noted the Court.
There were certain files in the devices seized from Yasin Bhatkal which were password protected. CERT-In experts opened those files and found certain incriminating material as per the report on the judicial record which clearly show that Yasin Bhatkal was involved in executing certain terrorist activities in future, besides the terrorist activities in which he was already involved.
Appearing for Bhatkal, Advocate MS Khan during arguments submitted that Bhatkal had faced prosecution in other cases of bomb blasts and had also been convicted in one of the matters. He submitted that evidence in those cases cannot be relied upon in the present case as it would tantamount to the trial of Yasin Bhatkal on the second occasion, based on the same evidence.
It was further argued that the mere involvement of Yasin Bhatkal in previous incidence, ipso facto cannot be considered as evidence for the charge of conspiracy, more particularly when Yasin Bhatkal has already faced trial for different offences inter alia charge of conspiracy, his lawyer argued.