Madurai man jailed in France deported

A 40-year-old man, who spent seven years in a jail in France for allegedly keeping links with terror organisations and recruiting two French citizens for training in Pakistan, was deported to India last week.

A joint team of officials of the Intelligence Bureau and Delhi Police interrogated Mohammad Rasheed, a native of Madurai in Tamil Nadu, at the Indira Gandhi International Airport on Monday, and later handed him over to the National Investigation Agency (NIA). An NIA official said Rasheed has now been handed over to Tamil Nadu police for further probe.

“Rasheed is suspected to have contacted Indians and helped them reach France and some countries in the Middle East,” a source at the airport told HT.

The agencies are now in search for a suspected money trail between Rasheed and his contacts in south India. Rasheed, believed to self-radicalised, was allegedly in touch with terrorists involved in the 2002 Bali bombings in Indonesia, in which 202 people were killed.

The official said that while working as a project engineer at a multi-national company in Dubai, Rasheed fled to France around eight years ago and married a French woman there.

In May 2011, French authorities, following inputs from Indian intelligence agencies, tracked him down at the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris and arrested him. In 2013, he was sentenced to eight years in prison on charges of criminal conspiracy for wanting to carry out a series of blasts in France through his alleged links with terror outfits.

“Authorities in France had established that Rasheed was in touch with the terrorists behind the Bali bombings. His links with terror operatives in India are now being traced,” the official cited above said.

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