Pakistan Dawat-e-Islami link emerges in Udaipur killing
Ghous Mohammed, who along with Riyaz Attari had beheaded Kanhaiya, was called by the senior functionaries of Dawat-e-Islami to Pakistan in 2014. Attari, also a Dawat follower, had tried to infiltrate into the minority wing of Rajasthan BJP.
Riyaz Attari and Ghous Mohammed beheaded tailor Kanhaiya Lal with knives for supporting former BJP leader Nupur Sharma’s remarks on Prophet Mohammed.
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According to probe, various accused had made frequent foreign trips. Ghous Mohammed, who along with Riyaz Attari had beheaded Kanhaiya, was called by the senior functionaries of Dawat-e-Islami to Pakistan in 2014.
The Karachi-based Dawat-e-Islami's aim is to spread the teachings of the Quran and Sunnah with the objective of advocating Shariah globally. It has a huge following in Pakistan and is committed to supporting the blasphemy law in the Islamic Republic.
According to investigating officials, Mohammed stayed in Karachi for 40 days. He had visited Saudi Arabia for Umrah in 2013 and 2019.
The other accused have also travelled abroad, including Saudi Arabia.
While Ghous Mohammed was trained by DeI functionaries in Karachi, the second killer Riyaz Attari was trying to infiltrate into the minority cell of Rajasthan's Bharatiya Janata Party unit. The investigation revealed that Attari, is a follower of Dawat-e-Islami leader Illyas Attar Qadri, was trying to get close to BJP leaders and workers of the Muslim Rashtriya Manch. He had attempted to get close to BJP Minority Morcha member
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Irshad Chainwala and Tahir Raza Khan, a BJP worker, with a view to target them.
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Irshad Chainwala and Tahir Raza Khan, a BJP worker, with a view to target them.
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Attari allegedly carried out recce of BJP establishments and functionaries of the party for this purpose. The BJP has denied any links to Attari over Congress charges of him being linked to the saffron party.
During interrogation, accused Riyaz Atri has not uttered a word about his trying to enter BJP or target the saffron party leaders. The process of transferring two accused to the NIA custody is on. According to internal security experts in Delhi and Rajasthan, neither Atri nor Ghous Mohammad have revealed a larger conspiracy on their part to target BJP leaders.
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.
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