ISIS India head, Saquib Nachan dies in Delhi hospital after brain haemorrhage

Saquib Abdul Hamid Nachan, alleged head of the Islamic State’s India module and a former member of the banned Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), died on Saturday afternoon following a brain haemorrhage. He was 57. Nachan was admitted to Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital from Tihar Jail, where he had been lodged since his arrest by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in December 2023. Doctors confirmed that he died at 12:10 pm.

Nachan had been hospitalised earlier this week after he suffered a brain stroke while in judicial custody. He was initially taken to Deendayal Upadhyay Hospital on Monday, before being shifted to Safdarjung Hospital on Wednesday as his condition deteriorated. According to his lawyer Samsher Ansari, Nachan had suffered two previous strokes — one in 2021 and another shortly before his 2023 arrest. His body will be handed over to family after a postmortem. The last rites are scheduled to be held on Sunday at Borivali village near Padgha in Maharashtra’s Thane district.

In 2023, Nachan was arrested from Padgha along with 15 others during an NIA crackdown on alleged ISIS operatives across India. The agency claimed they were working under the directives of foreign handlers and were involved in terror-related activities, including the fabrication of improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The group had allegedly declared Padgha village a “liberated zone” and was accused of attempting to radicalise Muslim youth to join ISIS.

Nachan was described by investigators as the leader of the group arrested from Padgha and the person administering ‘bayath’ — the oath of allegiance to the ISIS Khalifa — to new members. He was the primary accused in what the agency called the Delhi–Padgha ISIS Terror Module case. Authorities said that the arrested group was involved in planning attacks and expanding ISIS’s ideological reach within India.

Previously, Nachan was convicted in the 2002–03 Mumbai serial blasts case, involving explosions at Vile Parle, Mulund, and Mumbai Central. These attacks had killed 13 people and injured over 100. He was found guilty under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) for illegal arms possession, including an AK-56 rifle, and sentenced to 10 years in prison. He was released in 2017 after serving his term with a remission of over five months for good conduct.