New Delhi: Russia’s principal security agency has claimed to have detained a suicide bomber of central Asian origin, allegedly planning to leave for India to carry out a terror attack against a member of the “ruling circles”.According to state-run Sputnik News, Federal Security Service (FSB) announced that a foreign national has reportedly confessed to belonging to the Islamic State terror group and organising an imminent attack on Indian territory.“Russia’s FSB identified and detained a member of the Islamic State international terrorist organisation banned in Russia, a native of a country in the Central Asian region, who planned to commit a terrorist act by blowing himself up against one of the representatives of the ruling circles of India,” said the statement, as reported by the Russian media.There has been no official response from the Indian government, so far.The FSB also released a video showing a man with his face blurred and hands behind his back, speaking in Russian.As per a translation of the video, the detained person claimed that he was to carry out a terror attack in retaliation for the alleged insult to Prophet Mohammad.The FSB statement, as quoted by Sputnik News, further said that the terrorist “was conditioned both online on Telegram and during in-person meetings in Istanbul over a span of several months from April to June”.He then travelled to Russia to prepare to leave for India. “In India, I was to be met and given all the necessary things to commit an act of terrorism at the behest of the Islamic State for insulting Prophet Muhammad,” the alleged IS member said in the video.As per a rough translation, he identified himself as ‘Azamov’, born in 1992. While he has not been identified officially, he is said to be from Uzbekistan.In the video, he claimed to have “made a vow to the Emir of the ISIS name Yusuf Tajike”.In at least two reports of Eurasianet, a ‘Yusuf Tajiki’ has been described as a “popular recruiter” and an administrator of Protectors of the Ummat telegram channel of the IS in Afghanistan. A July 20 article on the online site also states that Tajiki, a “prominent Tajik-speaking propagandist”, was killed by the Taliban earlier in the same month.In June, BJP’s spokesperson Nupur Sharma was suspended, and the party’s Delhi media head Naveen Kumar Jindal was expelled by the party after their controversial remarks against the Prophet, which triggered a diplomatic backlash from Islamic countries.
