Rourkela, Aug. 13: The crime branch of state police today filed a charge sheet against four Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) activists, who had been arrested from the city in February.

A team of crime branch officials, along with a lawyer from Cuttack at the Sub-divisional Judicial Magistrate court here filed the charge sheet.

On February 17, a joint team of police from Odisha and Telangana arrested the four activists and a woman from a rented house in the city. They were identified as Sk Mehboob, Amjad Khan, Md Sallik, Zakir Hussein and Mehboob’s mother Nazma Bibi. 

The police later arrested Naveen Sahu, a small-time LIC agent and the owner of a photocopy centre, for helping them forge documents and open a bank account based on those documents.

The six have been booked under various sections of the Indian Penal Code, Arms Act and the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act. 

The most serious among these charges is waging war against the country. Sahu has been booked especially for forging documents and criminal conspiracy.

The alleged activists, who hail from Khandua in Madhya Pradesh, are history-sheeters. They managed to escape from jail in a daring jailbreak in that state.