Call it blessing in disguise or good luck for the people of the State, the regular move by subversive forces to strike a major tragedy particularly in the railways was foiled either by the alert public or the move failed to cause any serious damage to public life or property.
However what is serious and a major cause for worry to the public as well as the government is the failure of Anti-Terrorists Squad (ATS) of the State to make any remarkable breakthrough for the last many years. What is more alarming is that the terror forces were active in the State in form of various sleeping modules or even making small subversive activities, but while the ATS officials failed to lay a trap on them, the sleuths from the special forces of the other states, kept on raiding in various parts of the Uttar Pradesh and arresting the persons involved in terror activities.
If one goes by some recent activities targeting Indian Railway in the State which including planting of a timer bomb with IED in Mahanagari Express, pointed that ``terror group’ is continuously planning for a major militant activity though the efforts went futile. last year, a big terror activity was averted at Farukkabad railway station, when a passenger located a timer bomb planted at Platform No-1. The bomb was planted near the wall of parcel house at platform number 1. As the clock was active, so all preventive measures has been taken besides calling a nine member team of the Kanpur PAC’s anti-bomb squad to diffuse the timer and avert tragedy. The bomb had 10 sticks of explosives weighing around 330 grams, two PVC pipes, one clock, two 9 volt batteries and three radio transformers. The cops said that they were two bombs which were tied together to make a larger impact. The intensity of the bomb would have affected an area of over 100 meters, the experts said.
Besides the above, just a day before the above recovery, a major tragedy was also averted Prayag-Bareilly passenger passed through the broken track in Mohanlalganj area, just before the local railway station, after a big jerk and it automatically stopped at the station. When the officials checked it, they found that someone had cut a big portion of a track but luckily the train passed through it and not derailed otherwise it would cause great human loss. Similar kind of activities has been repeated in at least half a dozen places with more recently almost at the same spot in Mohanlalganj in the last week. Suspecting terror activity by the then DG Railways, Javeed Ahmed, who is now DGP of the State, all the matters were handed over for probe to ATS but so far they draw a blank and now a timer bomb was recovered in Mahanagari Express on Thursday night.
Not just the above, the failure of the UP ATS to keep a tab on terror activity in the state also stand exposed when a Joint Team of Special Operation Group and Anti-Terrorists Squad (ATS) of the Gujrat arrested one terrorist, Hashim Ujma aka Manzul, from lucknow on April 9 last year. Manzul was wanted in connection with murder of one police constable Vinay Yadav. Another development which exposed failure of ATS when two of the suspected terrorists hailing from the state were gunned down in an alleged separate encounter with Telangana police also last year. When the ATS officials were groping in dark to make a breakthrough in well organised network of Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), a banned organisation, which came to the fore when a blast took place inside a rented house in Bijnore, the cops of the Telangana police claimed to have gunned down two of the members while one another SIMI men was killed in a separate encounter with Telangana police a week back. It may be mentioned here that the sleuths of the UP ATS came on their toes when a blast took place in Bijnore in September 2014.
Probe by ATS pointed that all the six youths who took the house to operate terror activities were active members of SIMI and had evaded from Khandwa Jail in Madhya Pradesh on October 1, 2013. They were identified as Aijazuddin, Mohd Aslam, Zakir Hussain, Mehboob alias Guddu and Amjad. Recovery of official identity proofs of Khandwa, Ujjain and Nandurbar from the house where they were staying in disguised identity of Hindu youths, have further buttressed the investigations about the men being from MP. They were staying under fake identity of Hindu youths at the house of an octogenarian widow since July 14, 2014. The search of the house in Jatan locality has led the UP police to a gas cylinder, timer device, wires and other incriminating material, besides a 9 mm pistol and laptop. The recovery of gas cylinder suggested that the men could have been preparing similar lPG cylinder-timer based explosives, similar to those used in the July 2013 serial blasts at the Mahabodhi Temple premises in Gaya-Bihar.
When the UP ATS failed to get any success, the probe into Binore incident was handed over to National Investigating Agency (NIA). However, when both ATS and NIA were trying to make a breakthrough, the Telangana police gave a shocker to them when they gunned two SIMI men, Aijazuddin and Mohamed Aslam in Nalgonda district and claimed them not just to be the two SIMI men who were fleeing after Bijnore blast. Just three days after the above encounter in which Talangana police revealed UP connection of the terrorists, they gunned down five more suspected militants identified as Vicaruddin, Syed Amjad, M Hanif, M Zakir and Izhar Khan, in an alleged encounter in Warrangal. Besides others, Izhar Khan hails from lucknow. It may be recalled that Manzul arrested by Gujrat ATS, reportedly not just have links with Izhar Khan killed in Warrangal but he alleged to have supplied weapons to militants involved in killing of a policemen in Ahmedabad besides other terror cases.
lastly, while the UP ATS kept sleeping, (NIA) and other central security agencies arrested 14 suspected militants including two from Uttar Pradesh including one from lucknow, in the beginning of this month and claimed that they were planning to carry out attacks in the country ahead of Republic Day.