NEW DELHI: Abdullah, the alleged Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militant arrested along with his accomplice at Hazrat Nizamuddin railway station on Monday, had met about a dozen militants from Hyderabad who were also undergoing training in handling of arms and explosives in Bangladesh.

During interrogation, Abdullah allegedly revealed that during his three-month stay there, he also met the then LeT chief in Bangladesh Ghulam Yazdani, and a Harkat-ul-Jehad-e-Islami militant Ahsan Ullah Hasan, who were gunned down in an encounter with the Special Cell earlier this year.

Abdullah and his accomplice, Mohammad Ali, told the police that the LeT militants were now being sent to Pakistan through "genuine" ways. They travel by air either to Iran or Afghanistan on genuine passports, after which they sneak into Pakistan where they join terrorist training camps run by the LeT and the Inter-Services Intelligence. While the duo are being interrogated to identify their contacts operating in different parts of the country, the Special Cell is conducting raids on the basis of information extracted from the computer recovered from the Ballabhgarh hideout of the slain militant, Abu Hamza, who was expert at configuring bombs and was apparently a part of the core strike team.

Stating that Hamza had been planning a big strike perhaps in Delhi, a senior police officer said: "The seizure of arms and explosives from Hamza's hideout, coupled with the arrest of three militants, suspected to belong to LeT, at Aurangabad in Maharashtra and recovery of 30 kg of RDX and 10 AK-series assault rifles from them on Tuesday, has raised strong suspicions about the outfit planned to carry out a series of simultaneous strikes."

Though the Special Cell has so far not come across evidence linking the module smashed in the Capital to the one unearthed in Aurangabad, it is learnt that the Delhi police would contact their Mumbai counterparts to find out if they had any Delhi connection.

Joint Commissioner of Police Karnal Singh on Tuesday had said Abdullah had had been assigned the task of targeting different places in Gujarat and Maharashtra.

Abdullah, originally a resident of Mumbai, had made Ahmedabad his base, an important strategic location for the outfit as it could easily push in huge consignments of arms and explosives through carriers operating along the border villages in Gujarat. Secondly, there were plans of creating terror at various places across Gujarat.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail