A special NIA court in Kerala has sentenced an ISIS operative to 10 years of rigorous imprisonment (RI) for promoting the violent ideology of the banned terror group and conspiring to carry out suicide attacks in Kochi.

The accused Riyas Aboobacker, a resident of Palakkad (Kerala), was also fined by the special court. He was arrested by the National Intelligence Service on September 24, 2019, and charged in October of the same year.

Aboobacker was found guilty under Sections 38 and 39 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and Section 120B of the IPC. He is the third person to be convicted in the ISIS Kasaragod Module case.

The case relates to the activities of 14 young men from Kasaragod district in Kerala who left India with their families between May and July 2016 to join ISIS/Daish, a declared Islamic caliphate.

During its investigation, the NIA found that Riyad also conspired to launch a suicide attack in a prominent business hub of Kochi in October 2018 to spread terror and further the activities of ISIS.

The investigation further established that Rias incited and sought the support of his co-conspirators to commit terrorist acts.

Rias, who goes by the name Abu Dujana on social media, has been on the run since 2017 due to the arrest of absconding defendants Abdul Rashid Abdulla and Ash Ashfak Majeed, who was radicalized into ISIS/Daish ideology.

In 2018, the investigating agency convicted Yasmeen Mohammed Zahid, who was sentenced to 7 years RI with fine, followed by Nashidul Hamsafar, who was sentenced to 5 years RI in 2021.

The NIA has taken over the case, which was initially registered at the Chandra police station in Kerala in August 2016 and is continuing to investigate the matter.