By Mubasshir Mushtaq

NEW DELHI

 Indian police shot dead five suspected members of an outlawed Muslim group in the southern Indian state of Telangana on Tuesday. 

Police said they opened fire on the alleged members of the Students Islamic Movement of India as they tried to escape from a police vehicle transporting them to a court in Hyderabad city, the state capital, local media reported.

The five members of the outlawed group had been charged for attacking police officers in the past and police claimed that one of them had links with the Pakistani intelligence agency, ISI. 

Tuesday’s killing is the second incident of deadly violence in the last three days involving alleged activists from the Students Islamic Movement of India.

On Saturday, two other members of the group were shot dead in Nalgonda district of Telangana, an incident police officials described as a "police encounter."

The duo had reportedly been on the run since 2013 after fleeing a jail in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.

The Students Islamic Movement of India was born out of a student movement in 1977. India banned the outfit in 2001 after it was linked to a number of terrorist attacks in India. 

The ban was lifted in 2008 by a Delhi High Court tribunal after a long review process but immediately reinstated by the Supreme Court of India.

The group's involvement in terror attacks in India has not been established in a court of law.

Last month, a Delhi court acquitted the group's former chief, Dr. Shahid Badar Falahi, for "promoting enmity between different groups."