SOURCE: Hindustan Times
A week after nine al Qaeda operatives were arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) for allegedly planning to carry out major terror strikes, another arrest was made from West Bengal on Saturday.
Samim Ansari, the tenth operative of the terror group, was arrested by the NIA in association with the state police’s Special Task Force (STF) from Murshidabad. Ansari will be produced before the special NIA court in Delhi, the agency said.
On September 19, nine operatives – three from Kerala and six from West Bengal – were arrested after the agency learnt that they were planning lone wolf attacks as human bombs.
The suspects, according to the agency officials, acquired large quantities of weapons, country-made firearms, locally fabricated body armour, jihadi literature, and literature used for making explosives. They were planning attacks at numerous locations including Delhi-NCR, Kochi and Mumbai.
In a statement released after the arrest of the nine suspects last week, the NIA had said, “As per the preliminary investigation, these individuals were radicalised by Pakistan-based al Qaeda terrorists on social media and were motivated to undertake attacks at multiple places including the National Capital Region. For this purpose, the module was actively indulging in fundraising and a few members of the gang were planning to travel to New Delhi to procure arms and ammunition. These arrests have pre-empted possible terrorist attacks in various parts of the country.”
