Mohammad Saifullah

Shahira Naim

Tribune News Service

Lucknow, March 8

Lone terror suspect Mohammad Saifullah, holed up in Lucknow’s densely populated Thakurganj since last evening, was eliminated today after a 12-hour operation by the Uttar Pradesh Anti-Terrorist Squad and the state police. Described as a self-radicalised terrorist, he had no proven links to any international terrorist group.Speaking to the media, ADG (Law and Order) Daljeet Chaudhury said five terror suspects had been arrested so far for the Bhopal-Ujjain train blast. The three picked by the Madhya Pradesh Police in Pipriya were Danish Akhtar and Atif Muzaffar from Kanpur and Sayed Meer Hussain from Aligarh. The two suspects arrested in Uttar Pradesh were Faisal Khan from Kanpur and Fakhrey Alam from Etawah. They had been booked by the ATS under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967.Edit: ISIS is the new spectreChaudhury said acting on a tipoff, the ATS and the UP Police yesterday reached a Haji Colony house where Saifullah and three of his friends resided.“The suspect and his accomplices were self-proclaimed members of the Khurasan module of IS. There is no evidence that they were receiving foreign funds,” said Chaudhury.(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)The ADG claimed they repeatedly asked Saifullah to surrender and used tear gas shells to force him out of his hiding. They also made his relatives speak to him. But he refused to surrender, saying he would rather be a “martyr.”To catch him alive, the ATS drilled a hole in the roof of his rented room and dropped a chilli bomb. The suspect  fired in retaliation, said Chaudhury. Finally, at around 3 am this morning, the ATS team broke open the door and shot him in an encounter.Inside the room, the police reportedly found eight pistols, four knives, 630 live cartridges of .32 bore, 71 empty cartridges, 45 gm gold, three cellphones, cheque books, ATM cards, PAN cards, four SIM cards, two wireless sets, pellets, two bottles of gunpowder and a banner. A motorcycle parked inside the house was impounded. Three passports issued in Lucknow were found too. A time table in English pasted on a wall described the suspects’ daily chores, from morning prayers and recitation of Quran to study hours.Chaudhury said till now there was no evidence to support that the killed or arrested youths were planning or had any intention to target anyone. “The group was active on the Internet and was visiting radical websites. They were getting indoctrinated,” he said.To a query as to why they were residing in Lucknow when they belonged to Kanpur and why had they ‘targeted’ a passenger train in Madhya Pradesh, Chaudhury said Lucknow was their “hideout”. Speaking to mediapersons in Kanpur, Saifullah’s father Sartaj Ahmad Khan and brother Khalid said they had not been in touch with him for the past more than two months.