Mohammed Saifullah, linked to the March 7 Bhopal-Ujjain train blast and shot dead by the Uttar Pradesh police last week, was trained in martial arts and had been practicing it along with his associates for the last several months. The findings of the National Investigation Agency(NIA) come at a time when new IS training videos have come to light where the fighters are practicing martial arts. The NIA sleuths say they have reasons to believe that the UP and MP modules were following the IS diktat and undergoing similar training in martial arts, possibly by watching the IS training modules online.
Even as the Uttar Pradesh police downplayed the IS links to Saifullah, the NIA believes that the IS inspired module was more than a radicalised set of youth preparing for a major strike. Last week, UP DGP Javeed Ahmad had said that other than the recovery of a single IS flag from Saifullah's hideout, all other links to the global terror outfit were based on opinion not facts.
The NIA sleuths have fanned out in the two states to collect evidence, especially digital evidence or footprints, to establish the identity of their handler.
"The NIA teams are in UP and MP. They have taken over the investigation. Digital evidence will be the key in this case as we will know whether the operatives had sent a video of the train blast to their handler or whether they were in touch with the India IS head Shafi Armar," an official said. Moreover, the agency is trying to establish the money trail within the country and possible funding from foreign sources to carry out the terror acts.
The NIA is also likely to gather leads related to a murder case against some of the suspects—a teacher belonging to the majority community had been gunned down. "The murder appears to be a part of the training for the module, where they were inspired to kill someone they perceived to be representing the majority community," said an investigator.
Meanwhile, the NIA sleuths are in possession of leads that show that some of the arrested youth wanted to travel to Syria and had even travelled to Mumbai as part of preparations to join the caliphate in Syria.
While the Uttar Pradesh police shot dead suspected terrorist Saifullah last Wednesday, six other suspects have been arrested in the two states on terror charges. Three suspects were arrested in Hoshangabad in Madhya Pradesh and following their interrogation, three more arrests were made in Uttar Pradesh.
Home minister Rajnath Singh had applauded the police forces in both states saying that it was due to their prompt action that a possible threat to national security was successfully averted. Eight pistols, 630 live cartridges, Rs 1.5 lakh, three mobiles phone, four SIM cards, two wireless sets and some foreign currency were recovered from Saifullah's hideout in Lucknow.
