BOMBAY, 23 August 2006 — In a pre-dawn operation yesterday morning, officials of the Anti-Terrorist Squad carried out a raid on the fourth floor of an old deserted building in the Central Government Scheme complex at Antop Hill, in suburban Wadala, and killed a suspected Pak militant Muhammed Ali alias Abu Osama in retaliation when he fired on the ATS police team.
He was later rushed to the Sion hospital where the doctors pronounced him brought dead. The police seized from him one AK-47 assault rifle, some cartridges and a small quantity of white powder in a box, suspected to be RDX.
Though ATS chief K.P. Raghuvanshi claimed to have received information of the two suspected Pakistani terrorists from intelligence sources, the truth remained that the raid at the terrorists hide-out was based on the interrogation of Muhammed Riyaz Nawabuddin, another suspected Pakistani terrorist who was arrested on Monday night by the ATS, and based on the information received during his interrogation, the ATS raided the place, where Muhammed Ali was killed in the encounter.
The thickly populated CGS colony, which has a large number of government employees residing in it, was cordoned off, with a large posse of policemen guarding all entry and exit points.
The ATS also pressed in sniffer dogs to detect explosives, and the officials of the Bomb Detection and Disposal Squad (BDDS) were also called to defuse any suspected bombs. Except for the rifle, some cartridges and a small amount of white powder, nothing else was detected and found.
The ATS officials declined to comment whether the killed and arrested suspected Pakistani terrorists were involved in the July train blasts, or whether there were more Pak terrorists in Bombay. “We are investigating, and will know about it after the interrogation of the arrested suspect” said a senior ATS official.
City Police Commissioner Anami Roy at a press conference in the afternoon confirmed that the two terrorists were Pakistani nationals and had entered Bombay with the intention of executing terror acts.
In another development, the Solapur police arrested Parvez Haji Amin Momin, the alleged main accused charged in the murder of the two policemen who were killed during recent riots in Bhiwandi, in Thane district. A police team is escorting the accused to be handed over to the Bhiwandi police today.
Meanwhile, the Bombay police banned the telecast of programs by HBO, Star Movies, AXN, Sahara One, Sahara Filmy, Sony Entertainment (SET Max), Zee Cinema, Star Gold and Star World. Notices for 122 offensive programs aired will be issued to the cable and multisystem operators, said Sanjay Apranti, the deputy commissioner of police (enforcement).
The cable operators had stopped airing the paid channels, and only free-to-air channels like Doordarshan were on air. The police raided nine cable operators and three multisystem operators that included Hathway, Siticable and In Cablenet and seized their transmission equipment.
The police action followed after the Bombay High Court, admitting a public interest litigation (PIL) filed last week by Pratibha Naithani, a lecturer at St. Xavier College, had issued an order banning adult content from television. The court also asked the Bombay police as to whether any action was taken against cable operators who continued to show adult films certified as ‘A’ despite the court orders.
Protesting against the police raids for airing adult movie content, president of the Cable Operators Association, Ganesh Naidu said that the channels should be held accountable for the objectionable adult contents, not the cable operators. Naidu asked as to why should the cable operators suffer for the negligence of the broadcasters.
