New Delhi, Jan 22: A special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court on Wednesday sentenced a key accused to ten years of rigorous imprisonment (RI) in a Pakistan-linked case relating to recruitment and radicalisation of Muslim youth for the banned Laskar-e-Taiba terror organisation in West Bengal.

Sayyad M. Idris of the Uttara Kannada district of Karnataka has been convicted and sentenced concurrently under various sections of the IPC and the UA(P) Act, with the maximum sentence of 10 years RI, as per the orders of the NIA special court at Kolkata. The accused has also been fined a sum of Rs. 70,000.

NIA, which took over the case from the West Bengal police in April 2020, had arrested Idris, along with Altaf Ahmed Rather of J&K, during the course of its investigation.

Investigations had revealed that the two men had conspired with one Tania Parveen to form a LeT module by recruiting local people. Tania was arrested earlier by the STF, West Bengal Police, during a search at Baduria, North 24 Parganas, in March 2020, on the basis of specific information. The STF team had seized various incriminating materials like Jihadi text books etc during the search operation.

It was further found during the investigation that the youth were being radicalised through social media to undertake Jihad against the Government of India.

Subsequently, in September 2020 and May 2021, NIA had chargesheeted the three arrested accused and the two Pakistan-based absconders, identified as Ayesha alias Ayesha Burhan alias Ayesha Siddiqi alias Syed Ayesha and Bilal alias Bilal Durani.

Red and Blue corner notices have respectively been issued against these two absconders, while the trial is continuing against the two other arrested accused in the case.