The sleuths of the Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) conducted raids at several houses in Bijnor and detained a father-son duo on the suspicion of their alleged links with subversive forces.
The ATS also reportedly recovered a pistol from the possession of the duo.
Sources said that acting on the inputs provided by the sleuths of the Army Intelligence, the ATS team conducted raids on Wednesday and picked up the father-son duo. Both are being interrogated by the ATS as well as members of both state and Central intelligence agencies.
To keep the operation `secret’ the local police have been kept away from the entire exercise.
The accused were identified as Parvez and his father Salmani, residents of village Noor Alipur. The initial probe has revealed that a few days back, Parvez’s brother Javed, who works at a barber saloon in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, was arrested by the police for supplying arms to terrorists. Following his interrogation by the members of Army Intelligence, the inputs were shared with ATS after which the father-son duo was picked up for interrogation.
It may be mentioned here that last week, the officials of the special crime branch of Delhi Police and the sleuths of Uttar Pradesh Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) had busted an ISI module by arresting half-a-dozen people and seizing an improvised explosive device (IED) from them.
On Wednesday also, the ATS claimed to have made a major breakthrough in the country’s ‘’largest conversion racket’’ when they arrested Islamic scholar Maulana Kaleem Siddiqui from Meerut. According to the UP ATS, Siddiqui was arrested on charges of facilitating religious conversations. His name cropped up during the investigation into the Umar Gautam case. Umar Gautam was jailed in June after the Uttar Pradesh Police rounded him up for allegedly running a conversion racket.
According to sources, the police are trying to investigate the matter thoroughly as there seems to be a huge nexus. They are trying to ascertain if there is a connection between the arrested terror suspects and the people linked with the conversion racket.
Besides ATS, the sleuths of Enforcement Directorate (ED) were also trailing the terror and conversion network, especially funding of their `modules’ from overseas or through `hawala’.