LUCKNOW: In a major early morning swoop down on Sunday, UP ATS officers, joined by a team of commandos, raided a number of places in western UP districts and arrested a Bangladeshi terror suspect Abdullah-Al-Mamon from Kutesara village of Charthawal police station area of Muzaffarnagar district.
According to a statement issued by UP ATS, Abdullah, originally a resident of Momin Shahi district of Bangladesh belonged to the Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), a terror outfit of Bangladesh. During grilling he was believed to have revealed to the ATS sleuths that his main task was to allegedly settle the members of ABT in India by providing them with fake Aadhaar IDs and other documents.
Abdullah, son of Raheesuddin Ahmad, was nabbed from a local mosque where he was believed to be working as a Mualvi for the last one and a half months. Prior to this, he was based in Ambeta Shekha mosque in Deoband area in Saharanpur district. The UP ATS statement also said that Abdullah, who was staying in different districts of western UP since 2011, used to travel to Saharanpur and Deoband frequently.
On the basis of the tip-off given by Abdullah, the ATS team rounded up four more suspects – three from Deoband police station area of Sarahanrpur district and one from Charthawal, Muzaffarnagar. The suspect, other than Abdullah, held in Muzaffarnagar is Faizan Farhan of West Bengal. Of the other three, two are believed to be from Jammu and Kashmir and the fourth is from Bihar.
Sharing details of the raids and recoveries, ADG (law and order) Anand Kumar also revealed the ambit of operation of the suspects. The ADG said, “Apart from Ansarullah Bangla Team, they were also looking after the operations of Hijbul-Jamait-e-lsami (Huji), Jaish-e-Mohammad.” They were radicalising the youngsters with ISIS literature, he added. ADG Kumar also revealed that besides the explosives, fake seals, documents, huge jihadi literature in Bangla was also seized by the ATS sleuths during the swoop down.
The raiding teams also recovered some fake stamps of village heads, district election officer and other administrative authorities to prepare fake IDs for other terror suspects and ensure their settlement in India. Moreover, the cops also seized explosives and material used for making bomb from Abdullah’s hideout.
Besides, raids were also carried out in Shamli district and the ATS sleuths held two madrasa students from Jalalabad township. They were also suspected to have terror links. All those nabbed on Sunday raids were taken to an undisclosed place for interrogation.
Aseem Arun, IG, UP ATS said, currently, police of three districts — Saharanpur, Muzaffarnagar and Shamli — were conducting massive search operations under DIG, Saharanpur range, to nab more sleeping modules active in the region and who had been in Abdullah’s contact.
As per the information provided by TRAC (Terrorism, Research & Analysis Consortium), ABT, a banned outfit, is an al Qaida-inspired militant group active in Bangladesh. Its main motive is to radicalization Bangladeshi youth, ensure their active participation in local jihad and take areas in Bangladesh in their control. According to website of TRAC, the group uses cyberspace extensively to promote jihadi ideology and training manuals to guide terror attacks. The sleeping cells basically operate from mosques