Jaipur, August 23 In a major crackdown on terror, an Al-Qaeda-inspired module was busted in a joint operation carried out on Thursday by the Delhi Police Special Cell and state police forces in Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and Jharkhand, leading to the arrest of 11 persons while six others were detained.
Of those held, six were arrested from the jungles near Bhiwadi in Rajasthan's Khairthal-Tijara district adjacent to Alwar. They were reportedly undergoing weapons training there.
The accused have been identified as Hasan Ansari, Enamul Ansari, Altaf Ansari, Arshad Khan, Umar Farooq, and Shahbaz Ansari, all residents of Jharkhand who were staying in Rajasthan for the past few days, police sources said.
"The module, as per the current state of operations, was being led by Ishtiyaq from Ranchi. It was aspiring to declare 'khilafat' and execute serious terrorist activities within the country," a Delhi Police statement said.
"Rajasthan ATS team is investigating the matter further to find out the plans of the module, if they had more associates in Rajasthan, who provided them help, for how many days this was going on, etc.," said Rajasthan DGP Utkal Ranjan Sahu.
Now the question that is doing the rounds in the Desert State is why did they choose the jungles of Bhiwadi?
The six suspected terrorists were arrested from the jungles near the Sare Kalan village under the Chopanki police station area. The police said Sare Kalan happens to be the last village on the Rajasthan-Haryana border.
The terror module might have selected this area for weapons training as it is surrounded by dense forests and hilly areas, which makes it difficult to locate intruders, officials said.
While the neighbouring Alwar district is infamous for cyber fraud, as well cases of cow slaughter, criminals in this area can escape taking advantage of the Rajasthan-Haryana border.
However, this time, after getting information about the terror module in Bhiwadi, a joint team of Delhi Police and Rajasthan Police carried out a secret operation and nabbed the six accused along with a cache of arms and ammunition.
According to sources, a training centre of the Al-Qaeda module was running in the Sare Kalan village for some time now where suspected terrorists were reportedly brought from other states for weapons training.
Surprisingly, the Bhiwadi Police were clueless about this nexus.
In July 2021, the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) had busted a sleeper cell in the same region with the arrest of a person named Asruddin, who was linked to an Al-Qaeda module and was involved in anti-national activities. Eight SIM cards were recovered from the possession of Asruddin who also reportedly had links with handlers in Pakistan and ran social media accounts using different names.
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