The National Investigation Agency today said it has registered a case against nine people hailing from Kerala and Bengaluru for allegedly being involved in forcible conversion of a Gujarat-based woman and attempting to sell her off to Islamic State terrorists in Saudi Arabia.

A spokesman of the NIA said in a statement that the case was registered against the nine people following a complaint from the 25-year-old woman who alleged that Muhammed Riyas Rasheed had lured her and taken objectionable pictures of her, besides illegally confining her.

According to the NIA spokesman, the complainant also mentioned that the accused had married her through deceit by forging documents and 'forcibly converted her to Islam'.

Rasheed, according to the NIA, had illegally confined and threatened her in Kerala before taking her to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in August, 2017 for joining terror group IS.

Besides Rasheed, Nahas Abdulkhader of Kannur (Kerala), Muhammed Nazish T K of Perigadi, Abdul Muhasin K of Kannur, Danish Najeeb of Bengaluru, Gazila of Bengaluru, Fawas Jamal of Peruvaram, Moin Patel of Bengaluru and Iliyas Mohammed of Bengaluru have been named in the first information report.

The case was originally registered in Ernakulam district of Kerala for criminal conspiracy and pursuant unlawful activities prejudicial to the maintenance of communal harmony besides wrongful confinement, extortion, rape, forgery and forceful religious conversion with the common intention of recruitment to the terrorist organisation IS.

The complaint of the woman, which forms the base of the NIA case, also alleged that the accused had coerced her to become disciple of controversial Islamic preacher Zakir Naik, who has been on the run after his name surfaced during an investigation into a bomb blast case in Bangladesh.  -- PTI