SIMI members arrested in Madhya Pradesh were in touch with Pakistan Taliban: Madhya Pradesh Anti-Terrorist Squad

Madhya Pradesh Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) today claimed that SIMI activist Abu Faizal and two others who were arrested yesterday had links with fundamentalist terror group Tehreek-e-Taliban, which is active in the north-western Pakistan.

Faizal, who had escaped from Khandwa jail with five others a few months ago, was cuaght from Sendhwa Pathar in Barwani district yesterday along with Irfan Nagauri and Khalid Ahmad.

ATS chief and inspector general of police Sanjiv Sami said here today that interrogation revealed that Faizal and others were planning attack on some important person, and were also in touch with the Tehreek-e-Taliban.

The MP ATS, with its Maharashtra counterparts, recovered three bombs from a Solapur house of Khalid Ahmad who was arrested yesterday, he said. Besides, more than 100 detonators and over 70 gelatin sticks were recovered from this place.

These men were also in touch with the accused in the case related to Patna bomb blasts (which targeted a rally of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi), Sami said.

Apart from Faizal, five others who had escaped from Khnadwa jail are still at large, he said.

MP ATS team searched places in Sambalpur and Jharsuguda in Odisha with the help of local police in its hunt for these absconding SIMI men, and found some money, but the accused had already fled, he said.

A group of robbers looted Rs 1,25,000 from a Gramin Sahkari Bank in Jharsuguda district on December 23. Sami said that it could be the men who had escaped from Khandwa jail, as the robbery was similar to one at the Manappuram Bank here.