NEW DELHI: Within less than a week of the capital city having been rocked by multiple blasts, the Delhi police claimed to have achieved a major breakthrough yesterday by nabbing suspected terrorists responsible for serial blasts in Delhi and Ahmedabad.
Police said they shot dead the man behind last week’s serial blasts that killed 23 people in Delhi. Bashir alias Atif, had planned the Indian Mujahedeen’s attack in Delhi as well attacks on the western cities of Ahmedabad and Jaipur, where a total of more than 100 people were killed, police said.
“Atif is the kingpin in the Delhi blasts,” police chief Y.S. Dadwal told Reuters. A police team killed two suspected militants, including Atif in south Delhi, during a raid for suspects in connection with the bombings.
“Atif planned and executed the bomb attacks in Delhi with the help of 10 men,” Karnail Singh, Special Cell Joint Commissioner, told reporters. At least five militants were hiding in an apartment but two fled from the spot and one was caught, he said. They seized a rifle and two laptops, which experts were now examining.
On the basis of information provided by Atif, the police reached a four-storied apartment near a mosque in Batla House, Jamia Nagar, where he and Delhi serial blasts mastermind Abdus Subhan Qureshi had allegedly taken shelter in July.
As the police team tried to storm the house, there was a heavy exchange of fire, in which two militants were killed and two Delhi police personnel were injured. “There were a total of five terrorists in the house. Two have been shot dead and one has been arrested while two managed to escape,” Karnail Singh said.
Mohan Chand Sharma, the inspector of Delhi Police Special Cell, who was critically injured during the encounter succumbed to his injuries in the evening.
Even before the day had ended, doubts began surfacing whether this encounter was a fake one or genuine. Loopholes were evident while addressing a press conference, Dadwal denied that the house had been targeted on the basis of information provided by Bashir. “It was an independent operation by the Special Cell of Delhi Police and it has nothing to with Ahmedabad blast suspect Abdul Bashir,” Dadwal said. The operation was led by Assistant Commissioner Police Sanjeev Kumar Yadav, he said.
The residents of the area claimed that policemen had started making rounds of the area since morning. Some residents were also not sure whether there was any crossfire. A resident said that the police could have deliberately planted bodies in the apartment to justify an encounter they called “fake.” With the firing taking place near a local mosque, tensions ran high among the people living in the area.
These were further charged by initial false media reports about militants hiding in the mosque. Operation Batla House is bound to give Muslims the impression that following the Delhi blasts, the police are under the impression that they have greater authority to target Muslims and Muslim-dominated areas as and when they feel fine.
Hours after the a dramatic shootout, hundreds of people, mostly Muslims, roamed the narrow by-lanes of Jamia Nagar — angry and frankly skeptical of the claims.
As a loudspeaker from a nearby mosque issued appeals for calm and thousands of security personnel trawled the area near the Jamia Millia University, people spilled out into the streets shouting anti-police slogans and alleging that the bodies had been planted in the fourth-floor apartment for the “fake encounter.”
— With input from agencies
