Rafiq Shaikh, owner of the Tata Sumo, which was ferrying a huge cache of weapons and explosives on Tuesday, was detained.
MUMBAI: Rafiq Shaikh, owner of the Tata Sumo, which was ferrying a huge cache of weapons and explosives on Tuesday night, was detained by Anti-terrorism Squad officers on Thursday morning. He was brought to the ATS headquarters in Mumbai in the evening for interrogations.
ATS officer Sunil Deshmukh said if they could establish Shaikh’s involvement, he would be arrested. “He could throw light on who had hired the vehicle before it was driven by the three suspected Lashkar men on the outskirts of Auragabad,” he said.
The officer said searches were on in Marathwada and Khandesh for the elusive “third man” who was supposed to receive the weapons and explosives on Tuesday night.
The police have not yet disclosed the identity of this man. Ameer Shakeel Shaikh, Sayyad Zuber Anwar and Mohammad Muzaffar Tanvir were interrogated by ATS officers at Kalachowky.
The police are exploring the possibility of applying provisions of the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) against them.
The police are investigating the terror links of the three, more so because of the strong Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) connections of Ameer Shakeel Shaikh.
“The first day of interrogation focussed on trying to ferret out information about the exact source of the weapons. We know the cache and explosives were shipped from Pakistan but we want to find out who was the middleman in the entire deal,” said another officer.
The police are trying to find out details about the “distribution network” of the three. Feroze Latif Ghaswala and Mohammed Ali Chippa, two LeT terrorists arrested from Delhi on May 8, told the police that they had plans of bombing Ellora and Bollywood functions.
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