Lucknow terror suspects plotted to attack Sufi shrine in a month: reports
The report revealed that police tried to negotiate with one of the militants for long, and even got his brother on the phone.
New Delhi: A group of five ISIS sympathisers, who were arrested from various parts of Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday, was preparing to launch a massive terror attack on a Sufi shrine in the state’s Barabanki area within the span of a month, reports said.
According to a report in NDTV, the men also carried out an explosion on an Ujjain bound train yesterday as a ‘practice’ for the attack on the Sufi shrine.
Following the blast, three suspects were arrested from Madhya Pradesh after they were captured in CCTV footage, and were questioned.
During the interrogation, the men revealed that they were part of a terror module consisting nine men, all from Lucknow and Kanpur, and had pledged their allegiance to ISIS.
The leader of the gang Atif Muzzaffar was among those arrested.
Further questioning revealed that the module had rented a home in Thakurganj area near Lucknow.
Based on the tip-off, the Anti-Terror Squad arrested two more men from Kanpur and trapped another militant Saifullah, at the Thakurganj residence. The group had reportedly rented the residence six months ago from a man called Badshah, working in Saudi Arabia.
The report revealed that the police tried to negotiate with Saifullah for long, and even got his brother Khalid on the phone.
The cops dialled Khalid and slid the phone under the door to Saifullah. When Khalid broke down and asked his brother to surrender, he was told, “I won't, I want martyrdom.”
After a long stand-off of 12 hours, the ATS finally tried to breach the house by drilling holes into the wall.
The ATS commandos then stormed inside the house (after issuing a warning to the terrorist). "The suspected terrorist then fired at the ATS commandos, which was then appropriately retaliated by the ATS commandos. After this, two rooms were thoroughly searched and checked, and the person identified as Saifullah was found dead," IG ATS Aseem Arun said.
"Efforts were made to catch the suspected terrorist alive, but unfortunately this did not materialise. We fired tear gas shells and chilli bombs, so that he comes out. But, he did not come out," said Aseem Arun, a senior officer of the anti-terror squad was quoted as saying.
A cache of ammunitions including eight pistols, 650 rounds of ammunition, 50 fired rounds, explosives, gold, cash, passports, SIM cards and a train time table were found along with the body.