Suspected Hizbul terrorist arrested

Mangalore Today /DHNS

New Delhi, Mar 22, 2013: A suspected Hizbul Mujahideen terrorist was arrested from Uttar Pradesh with police today claiming that they have unearthed a plot to create terror in the national capital ahead of Holi.

The alleged operative Liaqat Ali was on way to Delhi in a train when he was arrested from Gorakhpur, police sources said.

He was produced in a court yesterday which sent him to police custody for 15 days. Sources claimed that he told them that some weapons were kept for him in a guest house in a Central Delhi locality.

 

The Delhi Police is studying security camera footage from a guest house near the famous Jama Masjid mosque to identify who left an AK-56 assault rifle, two magazines with 30 cartridges each, and a hand grenade in a room on its third floor.

The ammunition was found in a police raid on the guest house on Thursday night.

It was allegedly intended for a man who was arrested while on his way from Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh to Delhi on March 20. The police say the man, Liyakat Shah, is a terrorist from the Hizbul Mujahideen group who moved from Kashmir to Pakistan in 1997 and was trained there.

The police say he was asked by a senior commander of the Hizbul to execute a terror attack in Delhi to avenge February’s hanging of Afzal Guru, who was from Kashmir and was convicted for assisting in the attack on Parliament in 2001 in which 13 people were killed, most of them security guards.

The Hizbul allegedly organised a Pakistani passport for Shah who entered India via Nepal.

The police say that on March 19, it received an intelligence alert that a terror attack was being planned in Delhi, and it managed to track down Shah in Uttar Pradesh as he headed to the capital on a bus. He told them about the ammunition that was waiting for him in a Delhi guest house.

The employees at that small hotel have reportedly told the police that a man who posed as a tourist checked into the room where the bag was found around 4 pm on March 20. Just four hours later, he left the room and did not return, though he had paid for a full day’s stay.