The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has uncovered an ISIS terror financing plot that links to wood smuggling in the reserve forests of Maharashtra’s Padgha village in Thane district.
The federal probe agency conducted multi-state searches in the case on December 11, and seized ₹3.70 crore in cash apart from gold jewellery and bullion worth ₹6 crore during the raids, it said in a statement on Saturday.
The searches included the twin villages of Borivali-Padgha, as well as locations in Delhi, Kolkata, Hazaribag (Jharkhand) and Prayagraj (Uttar Pradesh), said the agency, adding that the raids covered various companies and entities linked with the production of Kattha (catechu) that were procuring the wood from suspects.
A financial analysis, as per the ED, found that “various individuals linked with the Borivali-Padgha ISIS module were involved in illegal cutting and smuggling of Kaith trees from the reserve forest areas of the said area”.
Some wood that was recovered during the Thursday searches was handed over to the forest department by the ED.
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The wood of Acacia catechu, locally known as Khair, is used to extract Kattha (catechu) that is widely used in ‘paan’ and as an ingredient in Ayurvedic medicines.
The money laundering probe stems from a November 2023 case filed by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) against a “highly radicalized” module of the banned global terrorist outfit ISIS, based in Padgha, and its late self-proclaimed leader in India, Saquib Nachan.
The NIA had alleged that the Padgha module was engaged in recruitment, training, procurement of weapons and explosives, and raising funds to sustain their operations.
It has named 21 people in the chargesheet in the case on charges of conspiracy to recruit and radicalise vulnerable youth into the ISIS ideology and fabrication of improvised explosive devices (IEDs).
According to the NIA, the accused had also self-declared the Padgha village in rural Thane as a “liberated zone” named ‘Al Sham’, and they were motivating impressionable Muslim youth to relocate to Padgha from their place of residence to strengthen their base.
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