Finance manager of Al-Qaeda’s Indian outfit nabbed
18 Dec 2015 6:17 AM IST
In another major breakthrough Delhi Police Special Cell has arrested the finance manager of Al-Qaeda in the Indian Sub-continent’s (AQIS) from Sambhal district of Uttar Pradesh on Wednesday night. According to the sources, two more suspects of the same module have been identified and raids are on to nab them.
The arrested accused has been identified as Zafar Masood (40), who was residing in Deepa Sarai locality in Sambhal district and was working there as a building material supplier. Masood was helping Al-Queda in Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) in providing funds for the operations.
According to the sources, Masood was recruited by Mohammad Asif (41) who is believed to be one of the founding members and the Indian head of Al-Qaeda in the AQIS’s motivation, recruitment and training wing and another operative— Abdul Rehman (37). Both Rehman and Masood were brought here on transit remand and produced before a court, which sent them to 12-days’ police custody starting Thursday, police said. Masood went to Pakistan in 1999 for training after he was short-listed by Asif. After returning, he along with Asif recruited a dozen youth from Sambhal district in last one year and radicalised them. Before joining AQIS, he was a former operative of Harkat-ul-Mujahidin (HuM) where he had his training on explosives.
After finishing a diploma course in Refrigeration and Air Conditioning certification from the university here in 1994, Masood went to Riyadh, the Capital of Saudi Arabia, where he worked in an AC company for 950 Riyal a month, the official said. “After returning to India, he stayed in South-east Delh’s Batla House area with another suspect identified as Usman, who is also a native of Sambhal. They both did a recce of the targeted areas in Delhi to hatch a terror strike on either December 25 or on New Year’s Eve,” the source added.
Further raids are on in Western UP and other states after getting tip-offs from the arrested accused and the inputs from the intelligence agencies, the official added.
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