Maharashtra Anti-Terror Squad (ATS) has arrested nine people, including a teenager for alleged links to the ISIS, reported the NDTV.
According to the report, ATS was investigating the presence of sleeper cells ahead of Republic Day.
The report added that the ATS was trailing then ‘for several weeks’ to gather ‘relevant information’.
“The group was likely to swing into action”, when the ATS formed about a dozen teams and carried out searches at five different locations in Mumbra, Thane and Aurangabad last night, the report said.
The ATS claimed that chemicals, explosives, mobile phones, hard drives, SIM cards, acid bottle and sharp knives have been found during the raids.
Recently, 10 persons were arrested by the National Investigation Agency after they raided 16 locations in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh in connection with its probe into a new Islamic State-inspired module, ‘Harkat ul Harb e Islam’.
During its raids, the NIA had claimed to have seized a huge cache of arms and explosives. NIA said that the group was “under NIA surveillance for some time following inputs of their suspicious activities”, and released photos of “large cache of arms and ammunition”.
However, netizens seem to have found the pictures very ‘Shoddy’, with ‘Diwali Patakhas’, ‘Sutli Bombs’, and a ‘Tractor Trolley Suspension’ being passed off as a rocket launcher.
Taking a dig at the images, one netizen wrote, “when you are an ISIS module but celebrate Diwali too. NIA, South Indian movies have a better script and plot than you. Please hire some script writers from there.”
“Phuski bomb recovered in UP as major terror plot was busted,” wrote another netizen on social networking site Facebook.
Pertinently, the mother of Saeed and Raees, two of the arrested, told Janta Ka Reporter that the NIA officials had seized the family’s hydraulic tractor trolly to claim that they had recovered a rocket launcher.
