New Delhi: Following the arrest of a suspected ISIS operative, apart from explosives, the special cell of the Delhi Police has managed to eke out several other important details, sources said on Saturday.
An alleged ISIS operative, Mohammad Mustakim Khan alias Abu Yusuf, armed with two pressure cooker IEDs, was arrested in central Delhi's Ridge Road area on August 21 following a brief exchange of fire.
A Delhi Police Special Cell team took him to his house in Badhiyaa Bhaisaahi village in Uttar Pradesh's Balrampur district, from where a brown jacket containing three explosive packets and a blue-check jacket containing four explosive packets were recovered from his house.
According to sources, the police have been questioning Khan for the past week. He had planned to carry out a 'lone-wolf' fidayeen (suicide) attack with the help of the explosive-laden jacket.
The special cell sources revealed that though Khan was taking the sole responsibility of his entire planned attack, he was still in touch with other suspected operatives within India.
Further, the police are said to have identified Khan's boss in the ISIS, and currently efforts are on to trace his partners within the country. Sources said the key information gathered could lead to further arrests.
Read: Arrested ISIS operative was planning to plant IEDs in capital: Delhi Police Special Cell
Khan was connected with the other suspected operatives via several social media platforms, and had also learnt how to make IEDs in the same way, sources said.
Hence, the special cell is carrying out technical analysis of his social media platforms and mobile phone. The sources said that the assistance of the cyber cell and the forensic science laboratory (FSL) in this regard.
Khan was first handled by Yusuf-al Hindi, ISIS chief of India operations, who was killed in Syria in 2017. After that he was handled by Abu Huzaifa Al Bakistani, a resident of Pakistan, who was killed in a drone strike in Afghanistan in July 2019. Later, another handler instructed him to carry out strikes, police had earlier said.
Read: INTERVIEW: ISIS suspect Abu Yusuf's mother urges govt to forgive her son
