Security agencies including the NIA, probing the "heinous" murder of a tailor in Udaipur, will conduct an Internet Protocol Detail Records (IPDR) analysis of the phones used by the four accused arrested in the case, officials said on Sunday.
They said it would help in ascertaining whether there was a radicalisation programme being run by Karachi-based Dawat-e-Islami religious group. One of the four accused was linked with the JeI, according to the agencies.
The Rajasthan Police has, with the help of central security agencies, arrested the four people so far over the murder of Kanhaiya Lal on June 28 inside his tailoring shop.
The gruesome attack by Riaz Akhtari on the tailor was recorded on a phone by Ghouse Mohammad, and it was posted online. They said in a video later that they hacked Lal to death with a cleaver to avenge an alleged insult to Islam.
Besides these two accused, against whom the evidence is a self-shot video, the security agencies also nabbed two more -- Mohsin and Asif -- who are alleged to be a part of the conspiracy to spread terror amongst the public at large.
The officials said that an IPDR analysis would be carried out on their phones to check their activities on the Internet.
The IPDR helps in tracking the details of a call or message generated by a phone device and includes information like the number from which the call was made, destination port, start and end date and time. This technology works with closer proximity in a 2G environment.
The IDPR correlates the mobile users with other users of encrypted messaging service to make explicit the implicit call graphs in this data, according to a research paper by IIT professor Ranjan Bose, Computer Science student at the University of Maryland Adya V Joshi, who did internship with Delhi Police in 2017-18, and senior IPS officer Madan Oberoi, currently an executive director with Interpol.
The research paper was submitted by the trio at the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), the world's leading professional organisation having over 4 lakh members from 160 countries during its 4th International Conference on Collaboration and Internet Computing (CIC) in 2018.
The IPDR analysis also helps in ascertaining the number of times a mobile user has visited a particular website, besides the calls and messages that were made using the internet telephony.
The probe agencies have also found several Pakistani numbers on their WhatsApp account and said one of the accused was part of the secret groups ostensibly meant for religious activities.
In one of these groups, it was alleged that Ghouse had been asked to do "something spectacular" to avenge the insult to Islam and the officials believed that this could be the turning point where the 'barbaric' act of killing the tailor could have been hatched.
They said that Mohsin's place was used for sharpening the cleaver used in the act, while Asif had helped in carrying out the recce of the tailor's shop.
The four are the custody of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) till July 12. The NIA had on June 29 re-registered the case after taking it over from the Rajasthan police under the anti-terror Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.
"NIA has re-registered a case under sections 452, 302, 153(A), 153(B), 295(A) & 34 of IPC and sections 16, 18 & 20 of UA(P) Act, 1967 against accused who have conspired, planned and committed the heinous murder of Shri Kanhaiya Lal Telli on 28.6.2022 in Udaipur, Rajasthan," NIA spokesperson had said.
"The accused persons had also circulated a video of the criminal act in the social media claiming responsibility for the murder in order to trigger panic and strike terror among the masses across the country," the spokesperson had said.
The case was initially registered at Dhanmandi police station in Udaipur.
(With PTI inputs)
