Nazeer handled LeT fund in Kerala: Police

KOCHI: Dispelling the established notion that money for Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) activities in Kerala is coming from abroad, the Kerala police have found that LeT had raised crores of rupees from the state to fuel their activities. The funds were being handled by suspected LeT operative Thadiyantavide Nazeer, police said on Wednesday.
Kerala police have been able to find a new dimension to the entire terror-related cases in the state when crime branch solved a 10-year-old dacoity case on Tuesday in which a group of armed people attacked a jewellery shop owner and looted 2.25 kg of gold at Kizhakkambalam in Ernakulam district on June 20, 2002.
It's the crime branch team comprising superintendents Muhammed Faisal, P N Unniraja, DySPs P Prakash, P M Varghese and detective inspector Biju K Stephen that made a breakthrough into the case, the investigation of which had come to a halt for want of evidence.
"We will formally arrest Nazeer and seek his custody to know what they have done with the funds raised through various activities in the state. We have taken two of the accused in the dacoity case - K P Shabeer and Ismail alias Bomb Ismail - into custody for detailed interrogation," said inspector Biju K Stephen, who arrested the accused from Shimoga in Karnataka and Kochi.
Nazeer is currently in jail after he was arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in connection with various terror- related cases in the country.
Officials of the intelligence wing said that LeT modules in the state had been raising huge money not only through criminal activities like dacoity and robbery but also by anchoring deals in real estate and other business.
"There had been a notion that terror-modules were bringing in money from abroad, mainly from Gulf countries, to fund their activities. As per the new findings, LeT activists had been conducting a series of fund-raising operations from 2000 in various parts of the country as per the directive of the LeT core command wing in Pakistan. The wing directed the modules to raise money locally as flow of funds from abroad could be easily tracked," the officials said.
They added that in the light of those findings, the state police would be able to solve other robbery and economic offence cases in which huge sums of money had been swindled by the accused.