Four suspected ISIS terrorists have been arrested from the Ahmedabad airport, days after the airport received a bomb threat. The terrorists are believed to be citizens of Sri Lanka.
The Gujarat Anti-Terror Squad (ATS) made the arrests when they were allegedly waiting at the airport for their handler. The handler was supposed to give them task, sources said. The police have also recovered encrypted chats from their phones.
According to the sources, agents in Pakistan had promised them some weapons that they were likely to use in an attack but the suspected terrorists were caught before that.
The men allegedly reached Ahmedabad from Sri Lanka via Chennai. They were arrested before they could reach their target location.
The suspected terrorists have been identified as Mohammad Nusrat (33), Mohammad Farish (35), Mohammad Nafran (27) and Mohammad Rashdeen (43).
"Evidence showing their commitment to join the proscribed terrorist organisation Islamic State (IS), follow the path shown by Abu Bakr Baghdadi and to teach a lesson to the attackers who commit atrocities against Muslim Community as well as to teach a lesson to Jews and Christians," said Gujarat ATS.
Giving details of the arrest operation of the 4 ISIS members, Gujarat DGP Vikash Sahay said that four men "had been in touch with a man named Abu in Pakistan through social media".
"Abu encouraged them to carry out a terror attack in India... They were so radicalised that they also agreed for suicide bombing... Pakistani resident Abu also gave them 4 lakh rupees in Sri Lankan currency," Mr Sahay said.
"Two mobile phones have been recovered from them, which have photographs and videos proving their active membership with ISIS. Mobile phones had a picture of the Nana Chiloda area near Ahmedabad, which showed the place where ammunitions were hidden to carry out the terror attack. Pakistan-made ammunition has been recovered from the recovered location... Three Pakistan-made pistols and 20 active cartridges were recovered," he added.
On May 12, the Ahmedabad airport received a bomb threat email which turned out to be a hoax after security personnel searched the airport complex, but nothing suspicious was found. The threat email was sent by an unidentified person on the official email ID of the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in the afternoon, following which the security personnel at the airport scanned the entire airport, said Commissioner of Police, GS Malik.
In August last year, the ATS arrested three persons from Rajkot for their alleged links to Al Qaeda. They were prima facie working for a Bangladeshi handler to radicalise and recruit people for the banned terrorist organisation.