NEW DELHI, May 20: The Gujarat Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) on Monday arrested four suspected ISIS terrorists at the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in Ahmedabad. All the four are believed to be citizens of Sri Lanka, the Gujarat ATS said in a brief mote.
The ATS has taken the suspects to an undisclosed location for intensive questioning. The precise motive behind their presence at the Ahmedabad airport was not immediately clear. But it was believed that the Gujarat ATS made the arrests when they were allegedly waiting at the airport for their handler. The handler was supposed to give them task, sources said. The police have also recovered encrypted chats from their phones.
According to the sources, agents in Pakistan had promised them some weapons that they were likely to use in an attack but the suspected terrorists were caught before that.
The terrorists reportedly reached Ahmedabad via Chennai from Sri Lanka. They were in touch with Pakistani handlers, according to local media reports. Security has been heightened across the airport following the arrests. .
The arrests were made ahead of the arrival of three IPL teams at the Ahmedabad airport for the qualifier and eliminator games.
In March, two top-rung leaders of ISIS in India were arrested near the international border after they crossed over from Bangladesh. The arrested ISIS cadres were identified as Harish Ajmal Farooqi, a resident of Dehradun in Uttarakhand, and Anurag Singh alias Rehan, a resident of Panipat in Haryana.
Both individuals were described as highly indoctrinated and motivated leaders of ISIS in India, involved in various activities including recruitment, terror funding, and planning terror acts using improvised explosive devices (IEDs).
“They had furthered the cause of ISIS in India through conspiracies to carry out recruitment, terror funding and terror acts by means of IEDs at several places across India,” the police official said.
According to the STF, several cases were registered against these two by the National Investigation Agency (NIA), New Delhi and ATS, Lucknow.
In October last year, Shahnawaz alias Shafi Uzzama, a suspected ISIS terrorist who was on the most wanted list of the of the NIA, was arrested by the Delhi Police during a major crackdown by the anti-terror agency. Shahnawaz was wanted in the Pune ISIS module case and the NIA had declared a reward money of ₹3 lakh for credible information leading to his arrest.
On May 12, the Ahmedabad airport had received a bomb threat email which turned out to be a hoax after security personnel searched the airport complex, but nothing suspicious was found. The threat email was sent by an unidentified person on the official email ID of the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in the afternoon, following which the security personnel at the airport scanned the entire airport, said Commissioner of Police, GS Malik.
In August last year, the ATS had arrested three persons from Rajkot for their alleged links to Al Qaeda. They were prima facie working for a Bangladeshi handler to radicalise and recruit people for the banned terrorist organisation.
(Manas Dasgupta)