JeM operatives were asked to attack busier spots in Delhi-NCR by their ‘bosses’

According to sources, during interrogation, the arrested and detained suspects of JeM said that initially they were planning to conduct a terror strike near the Parliament to “avenge” the hanging of Afzal Guru, who was convicted for the 2001 attack on Parliament. Later, the top honchos of JeM instructed them to not to attack Parliament as they are new-comers and asked them to find out another place that has maximum number of footfall.

Meanwhile, Delhi Police Special Cell is likely to arrest another JeM suspect who has already been detained by them on Monday along with other nine persons from North-east Delhi’s Chand Bagh area.

The suspect has been identified as Shakhawat Ali, who is a resident of Chand Bagh area and is a Volvo bus driver. According to sources, Ali was a group admin of one of the WhatsApp group in which the suspects used to chat about their planning to attack Delhi-NCR in the near future.

“During interrogation, Ali revealed that their group that is of more than 24 persons used to consider JeM Chief Masood Azhar their hero. Since the WhatsApp group has been made, they have shared 13 videos related to jihad and Azhar’s speech,” the source said.

However, the Special Cell failed to retrieve the videos from the WhatsApp group because of the latest feature of end-to-end encryption but they have recovered some videos from the internal memory of their mobile phones.

Meanwhile, the trio suspects who have been arrested said that they were a group of like-minded youth who were inspired by Azhar. They would meet every week at their home and discuss plots apart from watching the speeches of Azhar online. 

“They began this exercise two years back and over the next couple of months they managed to rope in many more like-minded youth into their fold. Further they said that they managed to get in touch with a JeM operative by the name of Yusuf who had become their handler.

The top brass of JeM wanted them to carry out attacks primarily in Delhi and nearby locations,” the source added.