The anti-terrorist squad (ATS) of the Madhya Pradesh Police has arrested four Students’ Islamic Movement of Inida (SIMI) activists from Ujjain town and seized a huge amount of explosives from them.
Javed Nagori, Abdul Aziz, Mohammed Adil and Abdul Wahid were taken into custody after a late night operation on Tuesday but the police authorities refused to share details of the operation leading to the arrest from Topkhana locality.
Last week, the MP police had taken into custody five SIMI activists in two different operations in MP and Maharashtra. Among those arrested from Sendhwa in MP was Abu Fazal alias Doctor who had escaped from Khandwa jail in the intervening night between September 30 and October 1 last year. Five other SIMI activists had also fled with Fazal but the police are yet to reach them.
ATS chief Sanjeev Shami told reporters on Wednesday that 12 improvised explosive devices, 900 gelatine rods and 600 detonators were seized from the four SIMI activists. The police refused to share what the preliminary interrogation of the activists revealed and what they planned to do with such vast quantity of explosives.
The police said they could reach the four activists from information provided by Fazal, a hardcore activist allegedly involved in several acts of terror in the country. Fazal was first arrested in June 2011 along with many other SIMI activists.
The ATS had last week also arrested two persons Sadia and Umer Hafiz from Solapur after a joint operation carried out with the help of Maharashtra police. The MP police had seized three improvised explosives, 70 gelatin rods and 100 detonators during that operation.
The MP police had claimed the duo was associated with Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan. The police reached the duo after being tipped by Khalid Ahmed, one of the three arrested from Barwani.