‘Rarely came home, did not know much about his life’: Kin of arrested ISIS terror suspect

A day after Mohammad Arshad Warsi (29) was arrested by the Delhi Police Special Cell, along with two others, for allegedly being operatives of an ISI-sponsored module, his father said the family did not know much about his life.

Waris Khan, a government school teacher, said his son used to come to the village in Jharkhand’s Garhwa once or twice a year during Eid and never spoke about anything “connected to what he has been accused of”.

“Arshad mostly remained outside our village since he studied at Aligarh Muslim University. We hardly got a chance to know much about his life… he took home tuitions for maths and science and taught at an institute in Delhi. I used to visit him at his home in Batla House where he stayed with his wife and a six-month-old child. On Monday, I got a call from a Special Cell officer informing me of the arrest,” he said.
Waris has two more sons, both engineers, and a daughter in school.
According to police, the module was at an “advanced stage of planning terror strikes in India” using specially designed IEDs tested in forest areas over months.
Four days a week, Warsi used to teach Physics at a coaching institute in Jamia Nagar for two hours to 20 students from classes IX and X.

Azam Hussain, one of the founders of the centre that has been operating for over 10 years, told The Indian Express that Warsi joined nearly three months ago as an ad hoc teacher: “We usually recruit teachers through reference but Warsi didn’t need one as his educational background — he was pursuing a PhD from Jamia Millia Islamia — was enough. We were shocked after watching the news of him being arrested for being part of terror activities…,” he said.
“He never discussed his personal life, all we knew is he lived nearby. We were planning to offer him a permanent teacher post as he had been performing well,” said a member of the administration department.

Another staff member said Warsi was being paid Rs 15,000.
Abbas, a staff member, said Warsi last came to the institute on Saturday. “… a teacher has taken over his classes,” he added.

Meanwhile, a Jamia official confirmed that Warsi was enrolled in a PhD programme in the Department of Management Studies. “His fellowship reports were satisfactory; he had enrolled in the programme in February 2019. He did his B.Tech from AMU. He was supposed to complete his PhD by 2024,” said the official.
Police said the accused are Warsi; Shahnawaz Alam (31), a resident of Hazaribagh in Jharkhand; and Mohammad Rizwan Ashraf (28) from Lucknow. While Ashraf was arrested from Lucknow, Shah-nawaz was arrested from Jaitpur and Warsi from Moradabad.

Source » indianexpress.com