Saifullah, suspected to be self-proclaimed ISIS , was killed in Lucknow this morning in an exchange of fire with the police after a 12-hour stand-off.
A traitor cannot be my son, straight and simple," said Sartaj about Saifullah, a suspected ISIS terrorist who was killed in an encounter with the Uttar Pradesh police. Feeling ashamed of his son's activities, Sartaj refused to take Saifullah's body, saying, "A traitor cannot be related to me, let alone be my son." He said he would have handed over his son to the police if he had even "an iota of inkling" about his activities.
Saifullah, suspected to be self-proclaimed ISIS terrorist, was killed in Lucknow this morning in an exchange of fire with the police after a 12-hour stand-off. He was allegedly linked to the blast in the Bhopal-Ujjain train yesterday, police said.
"My child has done a wrong thing and I have regrets for it...I would have handed him over to the police had I even an iota of inkling about it...The entire world would have seen and noticed how a father could put his own son in police hands," Sartaj told reporters.
"There is no need to hide a disease, else it becomes an incurable wound," Sartaj told reporters. "We are Indian citizens. I was born here, my ancestors were born here," he said, adding, "Almost everyone in the family is sad. But it is more shame than sadness for what he has done."
He said even his neighbours are wondering as to how this could have happened to a son belonging to a decent family.
The encounter came as Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh police teams carried out arrests of several "self-radicalised" persons suspected to be linked to the train blast in Shajapur in MP yesterday in which ten persons were injured.
Among the suspects held are Kanpur residents Mohammed Faisal Khan, Mohammed Imran alias 'Bhai Jaan' and Danish, who are believed to be brothers, according to police officials.
Police have also arrested Fakr-e-Alam alias Rishu from Etawah and Atiq Muzaffar, a resident of Kanpur, who allegedly was leading the group. Another person identified as Shailendra has also been held from Auraiya, officials said.
"These people were self-radicalised and self-proclaimed believers of ISIS ideology. They had no financing from any foreign source. They were using their own properties and other sources to fund their activities," he said.
Speaking about the encounter in Lucknow, ADGP Chaudhary said that eight pistols, ammunition, bomb-making equipment, timers, wires and other material were found in addition to gold and cash after the Anti Terrorist Squad (ATS) operation ended.
"They (suspects) tried several times to carry out small- scale terror activities,....low-intensity bombs but were not successful," Chaudhary claimed.
The UP police ADGP also said that two laptops which have been recovered from Lucknow and Kanpur have made it clear that the suspects were self-radicalised and influenced by ISIS literature available on social media.
"They also browsed the internet to learn how to make bombs," Chaudhary said.
"We found three passports. Four persons were living in the rented house for a few months. They would meet and frequently do recce. We also found compass, batteries, six mobile phones, 45 gram of gold, foreign currency and literature in Urdu and English," he claimed.
"We have information about the suspects on the run and we will soon catch them," ADG Chaudhary said. He said some of the suspects were students and two of them had a small business."While we have made three arrests, others are in our custody. We will book them according to their involvement," the ADG said.
Speaking about the encounter, police officials said that they had intended to nab the suspect alive so that they could extract more information from him. "We tried everything to make him (Saifullah) surrender, even requested Maulana sahib who lived nearby to ask him to surrender," Chaudhary said.
Shivraj Singh Chouhan says terrorists were influenced by ISIS
Speaking in the Madhya Pradesh Assembly, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said that those who had orchestrated the train blast arrived from Lucknow and planted the bomb in the passenger train as part of a "pre-planned conspiracy".
At least 10 people were injured, three of them seriously, in the IED blast in the train near Jabdi station in Shajapur district of Madhya Pradesh yesterday.
"The terrorists were influenced by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terror ideology and carried out the blast. It was a pre-planned conspiracy," Chouhan said in the Assembly during the ongoing budget session.
Madhya Pradesh Home Minister Bhupendra Singh said the Improvised Explosive Device (IED) explosion in the passenger train was a "trial blast".
"Yesterday's explosion was a trial blast. The police, however, smashed this terror network within five hours after the blast in train," Singh told mediapersons in the state Assembly premises today.
The terrorists had plans to orchestrate blasts at some other places also, he claimed.
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