Brenton Tarrant, the lone gunman who killed 51 people, including five Indians, in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, on March 15, 2019, had stayed in Goa, Mumbai and Jaipur, among the seven-eight places he visited in India, in 2015-16.
On the basis of inputs New Zealand intelligence agencies culled from a comprehensive 792-page New Zealand Royal Commission of Inquiry report released on Tuesday, Indian intelligence agencies launched an investigation into Tarrant’s three-month visit to India. They found that Tarrant, an Australian, travelled extensively in India between November 21, 2015, and February 18, 2016.
Following inputs from their counterparts in New Zealand, Indian intelligence agencies launched an investigation into Tarrant’s three-month visit to India. They found that Tarrant, an Australian, travelled extensively in India between November 21, 2015, and February 18, 2016.
Sources said Tarrant largely travelled and stayed in southern states, spending considerable time in Goa. He spent a few days in Mumbai too; the only north Indian state he visited was Rajasthan.
Tarrant, 30, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in August after pleading guilty to 92 counts of terrorism, murder and attempted murder for killing 51 Muslim worshippers including five Indians at two mosques during Friday prayers in Christchurch on March 15, 2019.
The report says Tarrant lived off the money that he received from his father and income from investments made with it. “With the money from his father, the individual travelled extensively. First, in 2013, he explored New Zealand and Australia and then between 2014 and 2017 he travelled extensively around the world,” it said.
The Royal Commission has concluded that when Tarrant moved to New Zealand in August 2017, it was with a fully developed terrorist ideology based on his adoption of the Great Replacement Theory and his associated beliefs that immigration, particularly by Muslim migrants, into Western countries was an existential threat to Western society and that the appropriate response (at least for him) was violence.
