The family of Abdul Rehman - the 19-year-old arrested Sunday and accused of trying to detonate grenades at the Ram Temple in Ayodhya, a terror attack sources said was planned by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence - has insisted their son is being "falsely implicated", possibly by his 'friends'.
Rehman's mother told news agency ANI, "My child is nothing like this. He has never done anything like this... all of this is a lie. He only operates a battery-powered rickshaw."
"Police did not tell us anything... they just took him (and my husband) away," she said, "All I would like to say is, 'please, bring my child back to me. He has not done anything wrong'."
"He was ill and had a hole in his heart... he had an operation after collecting the money through donations. We (her husband and she) have just one son and three daughters. We do not have anyone else," the tearful mother, sitting outside her family home in Ayodhya's Milkipur, said.
"If Someone Is Guilty...": What The Father Said
Rehman's father also spoke to ANI. He said his son had told him he was going away for two days to meet a friend. "I was not allowing him to leave. I told him Eid is here, and we need money..."
The father said he had last spoken to Rehman on March 2, a day after he left home. After that - the last call was at noon - his phone was unreachable, it had been switched off, the father said.
According to the father, he had been briefly detained and taken to a local police station for questioning. "... then they let me go and told me to go home, and that I would find out what had happened there. When I came back... media was here, and I came to know that he was suspected of carrying bombs. "
"But he told me he was going to Delhi to meet a friend."
"If someone is guilty... they should be punished. But it should be investigated whether he was falsely implicated after being called to Delhi..." the father said, blaming Rehman's 'friends'.
Sources have said Abdul Rehman is the oldest child and used to drive an e-rickshaw.
He may have been turned after a meeting at a town vegetable market last year, after which he travelled to Visakhapatnam via Delhi, where he joined a jamaat, or Islamic assembly.
Abdul Rehman's Arrest
Rehman was arrested Sunday by a joint team of Gujarat Anti-Terrorism Squad agents and a Haryana Police Special Task Force, and sent to custody of the former for 10 days.
After his arrest a six-member ATS team raided locations in Uttar Pradesh's Balia district to investigate links between an as-yet unnamed Pak woman ISI agent, whose alias is believed to be Ishika Kapoor, and a young man called Rahul Singh, who works for a private firm in Mumbai.
READ | Man Planning Ayodhya Attack Was UP Butcher, Fed By ISI: Sources
Raids have also been carried out in Ayodhya, Gonda, Azamgarh, Mau, and Sahranpur, and the security cordon around the Ram Temple has been tightened.
Ram Temple Terror Attack
Sources told NDTV the ISI has been planning this attack - on the Ram Temple - for some time, and that it included working for the past 10 months with the Islamic State-Khorasan Province, a regional branch of the Islamic State that is believed to be active in south-central Asia.
Rehman was reportedly trained by an ISKP module; this included indoctrination and training videos administered via a video call while he was monitoring his father's meat shop.
The conspiracy to attack the Ram Temple was triggered last week.
Five days ago he travelled from Milkipur to Faridabad in Haryana by train. He met with his handler, whose identity is not yet known, and took possession of two hand grenades.
He was then supposed to travel to Delhi and, from there, to Ayodhya, to launch the attack.
However, acting on input from central intelligence agencies, the ATS and STF team staged a combined operation and arrested him. Both grenades were recovered and defused.
Rehman, sources said, is being interrogated by the Gujarat ATS.
With input from agencies
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