BHOPAL: Uroz Khan, who had promised to supply arms and explosives to two suspected ISIS operatives for allegedly carrying out lone wolf attack on a Jewish synagogue and election rallies in poll-bound Gujarat, was detained by Gujarat’s anti-terror squad (ATS) from Hamarpura area of Ujjain on Monday evening.
The 36-year-old Urzo Khan hails from Ujjian district of Madhya Pradesh. His statements are being recorded by the ATS team at an undisclosed place, informed sources in MP Police told The New Indian Express on Tuesday.
According to the sources, Khan is linked to Ubaid Mirza, one of the two suspected ISIS operatives arrested in Surat by Gujarat ATS last month.
Ubaid, law graduate in Gujarat knew Uroz since 2007, while both of them lived in Delhi.
"Uroz had then told Ubaid that he could arrange arms and ammunition whenever needed," said an MP police source.
Since then both of them were connected over the phone. Recently Ubaid had sought help from Uroz for executing lone wolf attack on a Jewish synagogue in Khadia (Ahmadabad) and also to target some election rallies in assembly poll-bound Gujarat.
Uroz had sought a sum of around Rs 2.5 lakh to Rs 3 lakh for supplying the necessary material for the lone wolf attacks by Ubaid and aide Mohammad Kasim Timberwala.
Out of the demanded sum, an advance of Rs 20,000 had been credited into the Uroz's bank account by Ubaid.
Based on the interrogation of the two ISIS suspects Kasim and Ubaid arrested in Gujarat, the ATS team from the western state detained Uroz for questioning from Ujjain on Monday.
There has been a war of words between ruling BJP and opposition Congress in poll-bound Gujarat following the arrest of the two ISIS suspects from Surat.
The ruling party has been on the offensive against the opposition, particularly senior leader Ahmad Patel, as the Congress leader was among one of these trustees of the hospital in Bharuch (Gujarat), where one of two arrested ISIS suspects Kasim earlier worked as a technician.
Kasim and Ubaid are believed to be linked to IS modules run by overseas handlers Yusuf-al-hindi and Abdullah. These two ISIS handlers were also in contact with a terror operative involved in the attack on a restaurant in Bengaluru in December 2014.
Links to MP's Ujjain district with anti-national and terror activities isn't new, as the founder of banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) Safdar Nagori hails from the same district.
Also, Majid Khan, one of the eight SIMI jailbreakers who was gunned down by MP police on outskirts of Bhopal in an alleged encounter on October 31, 2016, morning, also hailed from Ujjain district.