CHANDIGARH: Interrogation of the three Kashmiri students arrested on Wednesday from Jalandhar’s CT Institute of Engineering and Technology has revealed that Kashmir-based terror outfit Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind (AGH) had been planning to carry out bomb blasts in the city during Dusshera, police officers investigating the case said on Friday.
The officers, who did not want to be named, added that the three arrested operatives — Zahid Gulzar, Yusuf Rafiq Bhatt and Mohammad Idriss Shah — had been instructed to watch out for the date on which they would have to carry out the blasts by looking for writing on a tree near a bridge in Amritsar. They added that ‘19’ had been inscribed on a tree, which they had found and that this meant that the date chosen was October 19.
The state’s Intelligence and police agencies are not on the hunt for the person who brought the explosives into the state and stashed them with the arrested operatives. During the interrogation, Zahid said they did not know where they had to place the explosives. He reportedly told officers that he had been in touch with the terror group over six months and had gone to Amritsar on October 7 to collect the explosives from under a bridge.
He reportedly used social media platforms to communicate with the group. After the interrogation, the police have started rounding up several others. Four other students who hail from Kashmir were picked up by the city police on Friday evening for questioning. The four are said to be friends with the three arrested operatives and have been staying in the city for some time.
Two other students in Jagraon, near Ludhiana, have reportedly gone into hiding and the police are currently trying to trace their whereabouts. Another student, Sohail of Awantipura in J&K, is also under the scanner for alleged links with the terror group. Sohail is studying at a private institute near Chandigarh and was picked up by the J&K police in Jammu.