SOURCE: HT
The wife of a suspected ISIS operative, who was arrested from Delhi on Friday night, said her husband had stored gunpowder and other explosive materials at their house in Uttar Pradesh’s Balrampur.
She said she had warned Mohd Mustakeem Khan, alias Abu Yusuf, against doing so but he told her not to stop him, news agency ANI cited her as saying.
According to ANI, the woman said she wished her husband, who according to police had planned to carry out terror strikes in Delhi’s crowded areas on the instruction of his handlers in Afghanistan, could be forgiven. “I have four kids. Where will I go?” she said.
The 36-year-old Khan’s father Kafeel Ahmed told a news channel that his son was a “very good person” who never fought with anyone and that he never imagined he would take to terrorism.
When asked if he knew about his son’s Khan’s terror plot, Ahmed said, “I have not heard anything about explosive material. If I had any idea that he was collecting explosive material, I would not have allowed Abu Yusuf to stay in my house,” according to news agency PTI.
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“Only after the police came in the evening and found the material, I realised what it is,” he said.
A Special Cell team of Delhi Police on Saturday took Khan to his village, Badhya Bhaksai in Balrampur district, to verify the claims he had made, a top UP police officer said, according to news agency PTI.
Khan, who was arrested after a shootout from the section of the Ridge Road between Dhaula Kuan and Karol Bagh, was going to install the two pressure-cooker Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) at “heavy footfall area” in Delhi, police have said. The IEDs recovered from him were defused later.
