The National Investigation Agency (NIA) carried out searches and arrested nine terrorists of banned terror organisation Al-Qaeda on Saturday morning, September 19.
The arrests were made after raids in West Bengal's Murshidabad and Kerala's Ernakulam on some intelligence input about the presence of the terrorists there, according to anti-terror probe agency officials.
They were planning attacks with IEDs, made from potassium procured from firecrackers. They planned to go to Kashmir for weapons delivery.
The National Investigation Agency arrested six of these terrorists from West Bengal's Murshidabad and three from Kerala's Ernakulum district in early morning raids. The nine were planning attacks on several vital installations in Delhi-NCR and several parts of the country to spread terror in the mind of the people.
"During the raids, the agency got a huge cache of firecrackers. They bought the firecrackers to hide procurement of huge amount of potassium required to make the IEDs," a senior NIA official said.
Terrorists identified
The arrested terrorists have been identified as Murshid Hassan, Yakoob Bishwas and Morshraf Hussien, all three residents of Ernakulam. While Najmus Sakib, Abu Sufiyan, Mainul Mondal, Leu Yean Ahmed, Al Mamun Kamal and Atitur Rehman, all residents of Murshidabad. Those arrested from Kerala were originally from West Bengal.
The official said that the potassium present in the firecrackers was taken out and then was used to make the IEDS. The official also said that they have recovered the crude IEDs along with the switches, batteries etc from terrorist Sufiyan's residential premises in Murshidabad.
The official said that Hassan was the main leader of the terror module. Earlier, an NIA spokesperson said that the group was planning to undertake terrorist attacks at vital installations in India with an aim to kill innocent people and strike terror in their minds.
The NIA has registered a case on September 11 after it received some vital intel about the Al Qaeda group.
