LUCKNOW, Mar 8:
An alleged terrorist, suspected to have been influenced by the ISIS, was killed here early today after a 12-hour police operation in the wake of the Ujjain- Bhopal train blast.
Saifullah’s body was found with weapons lying next to him when the doors of the house where he was holed up since yesterday afternoon were opened at the end of the operation, ADGP (Law and Order) Daljit Chaudhary told a press conference here.
The encounter came as Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh police teams carried out arrests of several “seld-radicalised” persons suspected to be linked to the train blast in Shajapur in MP yesterday in which 10 persons were injured.
Among the suspects held are Kanpur residents Mohammed Faisal Khan, Mohammed Imran alias ‘Bhai Jaan’ and Danish, who are believed to be brothers, according to police officials.
Police have also arrested Fakr-e-Alam alias Rishu from Etawah and Atiq Muzaffar, a resident of Kanpur, who allegedly was leading the group. Another person identified as Shailendra has also been held from Auraiya, officials said.
“These people were self-radicalised and self-proclaimed believers of ISIS ideology. They had no financing from any foreign source. They were using their own properties and other sources to fund their activities,” he said.
Speaking about the encounter in Lucknow, ADGP Chaudhary said that eight pistols, ammunition, bomb-making equipment, timers, wires and other material were found in addition to gold and cash after the Anti Terrorist Squad (ATS) operation ended.
“They (suspects) tried several times to carry out small- scale terror activities,….Low-intensity bombs but were not successful,” Chaudhary claimed.
The UP police ADGP also said that two laptops which have been recovered from Lucknow and Kanpur have made it clear that the suspects were self-radicalised and influenced by ISIS literature available on social media.
“They also browsed the internet to learn how to make bombs,” Chaudhary said.
“We found three passports. Four persons were living in the rented house for a few months. They would meet and frequently do recce. We also found compass, batteries, six mobile phones, 45 gram of gold, foreign currency and literature in Urdu and English,” he claimed.
Meanwhile, Sartaz, the father of Saifullah, refused to claim his body saying that a “traitor” could not be his son. Another resident of Kanpur, Naseem Ahmad, claimed that his sons, who had been arrested, were innocent and demanded an impartial probe.
The police said more arrests are likely.
“We have information about the suspects on the run and we will soon catch them,” ADG Chaudhary said.
He said some of the suspects were students and two of them had a small business.
“While we have made three arrests, others are in our custody. We will book them according to their involvement,” the ADG said.
Speaking about the encounter, police officials said that they had intended to nab the suspect alive so that they could extract more information from him.
“We tried everything to make him (Saifullah) surrender, even requested Maulana sahib who lived nearby to ask him to surrender,” Chaudhary said.
Speaking in the Madhya Pradesh Assembly, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said that those who had orchestrated the train blast arrived from Lucknow and planted the bomb in the passenger train as part of a “pre-planned conspiracy”.
At least 10 people were injured, three of them seriously, in the IED blast in the train near Jabdi station in Shajapur district of Madhya Pradesh yesterday.
“The terrorists were influenced by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terror ideology and carried out the blast. It was a pre-planned conspiracy,” Chouhan said in the Assembly during the ongoing budget session.
Madhya Pradesh Home Minister Bhupendra Singh said the Improvised Explosive Device (IED) explosion in the passenger train was a “trial blast”.
“Yesterday’s explosion was a trial blast. The police, however, smashed this terror network within five hours after the blast in train,” Singh told mediapersons in the state Assembly premises today.
The terrorists had plans to orchestrate blasts at some other places also, he claimed. (PTI)
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