Bengaluru woman arrested by ATS for Al-Qaeda links; ‘led AQIS social media team’

The Gujarat ATS arrested a 30-year-old woman, Shama Parveen, from Bengaluru on Wednesday (July 30) as a part of its ongoing crackdown against Al-Qaeda's South Asian wing, AQIS (Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent). Parveen is the fifth person to be arrested by the ATS within a week in the case.

A joint team of Bengaluru police and Gujarat ATS arrested Parveen, a commerce graduate, from her residence in Manorayanapalya inthe Hebbal area of the city.

Tracked, arrested from home

“A Gujarat ATS team led by Deputy Superintendent Virjeetsinh Parmar was sent to Bengaluru to track her movement after the arrest of the four men. On July 29, we were able to locate Shama Parveen in Hebbal, North Bangalore. With further help of the local police, her residence was located where she used to live with her younger brother for five years. We raided her residence on July 30, arrested her and confiscated four mobile phones and a laptop,” said Sunil Joshi, DIG of ATS.

Parveen was produced in the 8th Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate court in Bengaluru, where Judge Vishwanath granted Gujarat ATS a transit warrant to bring her to Ahmedabad for further interrogation.

Also read: Gujarat ATS busts terror module linked to Al-Qaeda affiliate, arrests 4 men

Shama’s arrest comes a week after the arrest of four persons by the Gujarat ATS in an ongoing anti-terrorist operation against the AQIS.

‘Led AQIS social media team’

“During the interrogation in remand of the terrorists arrested on July 22, it was apparent that the four were part of the social media team of the AQIS. Prima facie, it seems that their job was to spread the message of AQIS through social media. One of them, Mohammed Faiq, who was arrested from Delhi, is the senior member amongst the four. He revealed that their team had a fifth member – a female who had been operating under the same module or team and was in charge of the entire social media operation in the Indian subcontinent,” Joshi told the media.

“On further interrogation, Faiq confessed to have been in contact with the woman for the last seven years and that said that he was recruited by her in 2021. Based on the information, we launched a deeper investigation in collaboration with central agencies and Karnataka police and were able to identify the woman member as Shama Parveen,” Joshi added.

Insta accounts led cops to Shama

Joshi said that the ATS found that the Instagram accounts belonging to Mohammed Faiq and Sefullah Kureshi were still active even after their arrest and took the help of these accounts to track down Shama’s location in Bengaluru.

He said that while the ATS had frozen several social media accounts operated by the four arrested persons, Instagram accounts named ‘Stranger Nation-2' and 'Stranger Nation -1’, handled by Parveen, were still active and had posts dated July 24, two days after the ATS made the arrest.

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“The account also had several Facebook pages linked to it and was traced back to Shama Parveen. It was quite a popular account with over 10,000 followers. We traced one video that she had most recently uploaded and found the IP link pointed to a location in Hebbal area. The video was of Maulana Abdul Aziz of Lahore’s Lal Masjid, where he is speaking about an armed struggle to overthrow the Indian government and foment communal discord with the country,” he added.

Recruited for terror outfit

According to Gujarat ATS, Shama, originally a resident of Koderma district of Jharkhand, lived in Hyderabad between 2016 and 2019 and then shifted to a rented apartment in Bengaluru’s Hebbal area with her younger brother, a software engineer.

Shama who had no formal employment kept a low profile and handled several key social media accounts related to the AQIS.

Before taking charge of the social media wing of the AQIS, Shama was reportedly in touch with Shabnam Parveen from Wasseypur in Dhanbad who was arrested in April this year in Jharkhand in connection with links to Hizb-ut-Tahrir, a banned terror outfit in India. As per the Gujarat ATS, she not only led the social media wing for the AQIS but also recruited for the terrorist outfit.

‘Was in touch with Pak individuals, ULFA’

The Gujarat ATS began its operation against the AQIS in May this year in the wake of the release by the terrorist outfit post on Operation Sindoor. An official statement from the AQIS urging Muslims from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh to respond to the call and join the AQIS to “avenge the death of Muslims” was widely shared on the social media accounts of the AQIS.

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“We believe that Shama Parveen has been an integral part of AQIS’s social media propaganda machinery. During the prelim forensic examination of her phones in Bengaluru, several suspicious social media and email accounts were found. We also came to know that she had been in contact with individuals from Pakistan and even with United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) through social media. Parveen has been sent to remand, and interrogation is underway at the ATS headquarters in Ahmedabad,” said Joshi.

Following her arrest, Shama was brought to Ahmedabad on a transit remand for further legal proceedings. While the Gujarat ATS will be interrogating her for the next seven days, the Intelligence and police teams in Karnataka will be probing her local associations and any wider network that she may have had.

About AQIS

Noticeably, the AQIS was formed in 2014 at the behest of the then Al Qaeda leader Ayman Al Zawahiri and was led by Asim Umar with objectives against the American and Pakistani forces.

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However, after Umar was killed in 2019, AQIS rebranded itself with objectives against India and the Indian sub-continent. Following which, it launched a book, Nawa- Ghazwatul - Hind (Voice of the Battle for India).