Ahmedabad/Rajkot: A team of the Anti Terrorits Squad (ATS) of Gujarat police would soon go to Uttar Pradesh to interrogate the nabbed ISIS operatives in capital Lucknow yesterday during an encounter with the UP ATS in which one terrorists was found dead.

The team would interrogate the nabbed operatives to see whether there was any link between them and the two ISIS operative brothers Vaseem and Naeem Ramodia nabbed from Rajkot and Bhavnagar respectivlely by Gujarat ATS a few days ago.

ATS Dy SP B H Chavda today confirmed that a team would go to UP shortly and interrogate the nabbed suspected ISIS operatives there.

He also said that the investigation in case of the two nabbed ISIS operative brothers in Gujarat is still on.

After a 12 hour long operation one suspected ISIS operative Safulla, holed up in a house in Thakurganj area of Lucknow yesterday, was gunned down while two others Imran and Faizan who had allegedy helped him in train bomb blast in MP were nabbed.

Eight pistols, 650 rounds of ammunition, 50 fired rounds, explosives materials, gold, some cash, passports and SIM cards recovered from the spot.

Earlier Gujarat ATS had nabbed Vaseem (30) from Rajkot while Naeem (28) was caught from Bhavnagar.

The telephone conversation audio clips between the two brothers have revealed that they were very eager to carry out a successful terror attack as soon as possible to ‘prove their point’ to his ISIS handler. In one of the clips Vaseem is even heard to be complaining about the ‘slow pace’ of ISIS chief Abu Bakar Al Baghdadi. They had tried to hack one person to death in Chotila while attempted faile bomb attacks on shops here. They wanted to avenge the killings of their Muslim brethren. The ATS has reportedly sent the evidences and materials including the clips of their conversation with their handler, gunpowder, laptop, mobile phones and various downloaded materials including IED (bomb) making procedure, ISIS related info and literature recovered from them during late-night raids of February 25 from Bhavnagar and Rajkot, to forensic science laboratory (FSL) for various tests and corroboration.The duo have been booked under section 121 of the IPC ( Waging, or attempting to wage war, or abetting waging of war, against the Government of India.) which has provision of capital punishment and life imprisonment, and 120 B (criminal conspiracy) and other relevant sections of various acts.

Primary investigation revealed that the two brothers had come in contact with ISIS operatives online through various social medial like the Facebook, Telegram, Instagram, Imo, Whatsapp etc around 2-3 years ago and become influenced by their ideology and were in touch with some handler, who is yet to be identified. The ATS was keeping a watch on them for the past around 3 months and when their activities become more serious It was decided to nab them.They had tried some ‘lone wolf’ (doing it alone) terror attacks including hacking someone to death in Chotila and torching some vehicles but had not succeeded. Had they been successful, they could have been taken in to the ‘inner circle’ of the ISIS.

The father of the duo Arif Ramodia, a retired employee of Saurashtra university is a popular local umpire associated with SCA and have done umpiring in numerous district level matches.

DeshGujarat