New Delhi: Investigation of the arrested three ISIS terror suspects has revealed that they were targeting prominent places across the country, including Ram Mandir in Ayodhya besides several top politicians in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, and Haryana, a senior privy to the investigation process said on Tuesday. One of the arrested, Mohammad Shahnawaz, was on the most wanted list of the National Investigation Agency (NIA). In fact, the agency, last month, announced a cash award of Rs 3 lakh each for information about Shahnawaz and two others.
“Their investigation has divulged the fact that they were receiving instructions from their handlers based in Pakistan. They were planning something big across different States, including Delhi, UP, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh among others,” the official said adding “They were planning something bigger than 26/11.”
All three terror suspects arrested on Monday are engineers and have expertise in making bombs. Following their arrest, officials from different agencies have been interrogating them. Shahnawaz was arrested from Delhi’s Jaitpur whereas Rizwan and Ashraf were nabbed from Lucknow and Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh.
The arrest of the trio and subsequent revelation of ISIS’s plan to create terror across the country comes at a time when India’s top intelligence agencies from the Centre as well as from the States will assemble in New Delhi to discuss emerging terror threats and more progressive anti-terror modalities.
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Organised by the National Investigation Agency (NIA), the two-day-long anti-terror conference on Thursday and Friday will be inaugurated by Home Minister Amit Shah. Anti-terror squad chiefs from across the country, NIA, RAW and IB chiefs, and State DGPs among others will be present at the conference. National Security Advisor Ajit Doval will also attend the conference.
Sources from NIA told this correspondent that the major focus of the discussion was on the increasing nexus between gangsters and terrorists and the involvement of drugs for fuelling anti-India activities. “The conference will also discuss the strategy to deal with the Khalistani terror issue,” sources said.
The meeting assumes much more significance following the fact that NIA has launched a massive crackdown against Khalistani forces. It is expected that the conference will chalk out modalities among all anti-terror agencies to work in tandem to fight the menace. Another major point of the conference is to explore modalities on how to take more accurate help from other foreign agencies and forces to detect new drugs and weapon-trafficking routes charted by Pakistan and other countries inimical to India’s security.
According to the sources, intelligence agencies, investigation units and forces will be asked to emphasise providing intelligence and information in a specific format given by the government, instead of the system of sharing routine inputs. In fact, in a recent meeting of intelligence agencies, similar instruction was given to follow the same procedure while sharing intelligence inputs.
In the said meeting, according to the sources, intelligence agencies have been asked to gather information on terror outfits working against India, NGOs, and pressure groups among others.
