Lucknow police on Friday claimed to have foiled a terrorist plot to abduct Congress MP Rahul Gandhi with the arrest of three fidayeen of JeM.
LUCKNOW: Lucknow police on Friday claimed to have foiled a terrorist plot to abduct Congress MP Rahul Gandhi with the arrest of three fidayeen (suicide bombers) of the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM).
They had planned to bargain for the release of 42 jailed terrorists, including Afzal Guru who has been convicted to death in the Parliament attack case, police said.
All three are from Pakistan. Two AK-47s, 4 kg RDX, grenades and detonators were recovered. Mohd Abid alias Faatey (27), Yusuf alias Faisal (21) and Rashid Beg alias Raja (26) were coming to Lucknow from Delhi in a car. A Special Task Force team nabbed them near Lucknow around 5 am.
“These terrorists were targeting a VVIP politician from UP. The abduction was supposed to secure the release of 42 dreaded terrorists who have been arrested over the past years,” UP police chief Vikram Singh told reporters.
The list includes JeM extremist Afzal Guru sentenced to death by hanging in the December 2001 Parliament attack case. His clemency petition is still pending with the President.
Though the DGP did not name the “VVIP politician”, sources told DNA that the Intelligence Bureau (IB) had some time back shared inputs with UP Police’s intelligence wing that Rahul Gandhi was a JeM target.
In another startling disclosure, the DGP said the JeM had identified two staffers of the BBC — Altaf Hussain and Yusuf Jameel Kashmiri — who were supposed to help them make contact with the United Nations to mount pressure on the Indian government. “We are not taking them lightly, they are fidayeen and they are hardened terrorists,” he said.
Sources also told DNA that during their interrogation, the leader of this module, Mohd Abid, had revealed that during their training at a terrorist camp in Bahawalpur (Pakistan), they were shown clippings of the young Congress leader attending public functions.
They said they had arrived in Lucknow to take up menial jobs in the office of a political party.
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