Kerala Police, Coast Guard, commandos, bomb detachment squad on high alert after Sri Lanka blasts: DGP

Kerala Director General of Police (DGP) Loknath Behera said the state police, the Indian Coast Guard, the Commandos and the bomb detachment squad are on high alert after the Sri Lanka serial blasts in which more than 253 people were killed and 400 others injured.

“An analysis of large volumes of technical data like phone calls and social media activities are being done on a daily basis,” said Behera.

On Monday, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) arrested an Islamic State sympathiser and follower, identified as Riyas Aboobacker, of alleged Sri Lanka bombings mastermind Zahran Hasim from Kerala. Aboobacker admitted that he wanted to carry out a suicide attack in Kerala.

Aboobacker, alias Abu Dujana, was arrested after he disclosed the NIA that he has been following speeches and videos of Hashim, a radical Tamil-speaking cleric who is believed to have masterminded the Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka.

The 29-year-old told the NIA that he has been following Hasim for more than a year and has also followed the speeches of Zakir Naik, an absconding Indian Islamic preacher and the founder of the Islamic Research Foundation.

He was being questioned by the NIA since Sunday when the agency unearthed the Kasargod module of the terrorist outfit in Kerala during multiple raids at the house of three suspects.