Sleuths of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) detained one more person from Pratapgarh to extract his links with the lashkar-e-Taiba (leT) operative Shaikh Abdul Naeem. Naeem was said to be arrested by NIA on last Tuesday.
``NIA had took one Shahnawaj, a resident of Pratapgarh to interrogate him regarding his alleged connection with Naeem”, confirmed a senior official of the NIA, adding that they still had no direct evidences of terror link of Shahnawaz and had took him in custody just to clear his connection with the held leT operative. Shahnawaj, was reportedly taken to Delhi to grill him further.
“More arrests are expected after details are extracted about the sleeper modules Naeem developed in the past three years,” the officer revealed.
It may be mentioned that NIA arrested leT terrorist, Abdul Naeem Sheikh, from Uttar Pradesh, and produced him a court at New Delhi from where he was sent in 10-day NIA custody. Naeem, a resident of Aurangabad in Maharashtra, was said to be wanted by security agencies in various cases, including the serial blasts in Mumbai trains in 2006. Seven blasts had ripped through Mumbai’s suburban railway network at peak hours on July 11, 2006, leaving 180 dead and scores of others injured. Naeem is also an accused in the Aurangabad arms haul case and was arrested by the West Bengal police in 2007 while entering India from Bangladesh along with two Pakistanis and one Kashmiri.
In August 2014, he escaped while being taken from Dum Dum Central jail (Kolkata) to Mumbai to appear in court. He fled while the train was passing through forested area in Chhattisgarh. Thereafter, Naeem established a new sleeper cell under instructions from his leT handler Amjad, NIA official said.
Sources confirmed that a number of videos and photographs of vital installations of Army camps and power projects in Jammu and Kashmir have allegedly been seized from Naeem’s possession, which proved that he did reconnaissance of these places, the official said. He also said to have done recce of Taj Mahal and cantonment area here in lucknow. He also reported recced Kasol in Himachal Pradesh as well as some nearby areas which are frequently visited by Israeli nationals and other foreign tourists. Anti-Terror agencies have dubbed Naeem as ‘David Coleman Headley-II’ as he had been following in his footprints and did reconnaissance of the same areas. Pakistani-American Headley is serving a prison sentence of 35 years in the US for his involvement in terror activities and the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks of 2008.