The Hindu : Front Page : Arrested militants had planned to target Kandla

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, May 10, 2006

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Arrested militants had planned to target Kandla

Devesh K. Pandey

Huge cache of explosives seized; the militants had planned to attack Mumbai film awards ceremonies

THE BRAIN BEHIND: Two LeT militants, Mohammad Ali (left ) and Abdullah, arrested from Nizamuddin railway station in New Delhi on Tuesday. Photo: Anu Pushkarna

NEW DELHI: The two alleged Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militants arrested by the Special Cell of the Delhi police at Hazrat Nizamuddin railway station on Monday planned to target Kandla Port, a railway bridge and a market at Ahmedabad besides film awards ceremonies in Mumbai. A huge consignment of arms and explosives and a satellite phone have been recovered from the Ballabhgarh hideout of their Pakistani accomplice who was killed in an encounter with the police outside the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in South Delhi on Monday night.

According to Joint Commissioner of Police Karnal Singh, the militants have identified themselves as Feroz Abdul Latif Ghaswala alias Abdullah, a resident of Mumbai, and Mohammad Ali, a resident of Ahmedabad.

Abdullah, who is computer literate and has a diploma in diesel mechanics, allegedly disclosed that in 2004 he went to Srinagar where he met some terrorists who brainwashed him into joining the "jehad" movement. At their instance, he went to Bangladesh via the West Bengal border and stayed there for three months. He underwent training in handling of explosives under the supervision of Harkat-ul-Jehad-e-Islami chief Mufti Abdul Hannan, presently lodged in a Bangladesh jail. Hannan also sent Abdullah on some missions in Bangladesh.

During his stay in Bangladesh, Abdullah came in touch with LeT militants through whom he was contacted by the LeT chief of operations in India outside Jammu and Kashmir, Azam Cheema, who is based at Bahawalpur in Pakistan. At Cheema's instance, Abdullah went to Iran by air and then sneaked into Pakistan in June last.

During his stay there, he met Hamza, who told him that he had carried out terrorist strikes in Jammu and Kashmir during 2000-03. Abdullah was then sent to a Lashkar camp at Aqsa for advance training and subsequently briefed on the places he was to target in India.

Abdullah disclosed that this was his second visit to Delhi from Surat to hand over another explosives consignment to Hamza. The consignments were being smuggled in through Bhuj in Gujarat.

Abdullah disclosed that he had roped in Ali on the directions of his handler to recruit young men from Gujarat where the former had set up his base in July 2005.

"At his instance, we laid a trap for Hamza outside Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium. He was killed in retaliatory fire. A cable-network slip and a driving license issued in the name of Rajesh were recovered from his possession. The slip bore an address of Jagdish Colony at Ballabhgarh, where we conducted a raid early on Tuesday morning," said Mr. Karnal Singh.

The police team recovered two AK-56 rifles, six magazines and 179 live cartridges, 10 hand-grenades, five kg of PETN explosive, three litres of nitric acid, one litre of glycerine, three kg of urea, a computer and a satellite phone from there. The landlord told the police that one Rajesh had taken the house on rent in the last week of March. The police also recovered a circuit board, integrated circuits and a bunch of electric resistances from the house indicating that Hamza had plans to manufacture bombs. The computer contained information on bomb-configuration circuits.

"The very fact that Hamza had stocked a huge pile of explosive materials suggested that he had plans to carry out a major strike. Investigations are on to identify his other accomplices," added Mr. Singh.

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