Desi rocket launcher, explosives recovered from terror module: NIA

Agencies
December 26, 2018

New Delhi, Dec 26: A country-made rocket launcher, 12 pistols, 100 alarm clocks, 100 mobile phones, 135 SIM cards and laptops were among the other things recovered by the National Investigation Agency after busting an ISIS-inspired terror module on Wednesday.

Inspector General of Police (NIA) Alok Mittal said the module was planning attacks on important political and security offices in Delhi.

The agency said the "highly-radicalised module" was completely self-funded and no criminal antecedent of its members had surfaced so far.

"It was a self-funded group. They stole gold ornaments from their homes and sold it to fund their activities. They were planning to detonate a remote-controlled bomb or a fidayeen kind of attack," Mittal said.

Mittal said that questioning of those nabbed would reveal vital information about the module, their plans and handlers.

The arrested suspects also tried to make bullet-proof fidayeen vest. It was recovered from Amroha.

Those arrested include the alleged mastermind, 29-year-old Mohammed Sohail, a 'mufti', or a Muslim legal expert empowered to give rulings on religious matters, from Amroha in western Uttar Pradesh, an engineering student of a private university in Noida and a third-year graduation student in humanities as well as two welders, he said.

Mittal added that the agency found a video where Sohail is demonstrating how to complete a bomb circuit.

During the searches, conducted across 17 locations, the agency recovered a huge cache of handmade weapons, including a yet to be tested rocket launcher, material for suicide vests, 12 locally made pistols, hundreds of live rounds of bullets, 100 mobiles and 135 SIM cards, he disclosed.

The agency also recovered Rs 7.5 lakh in cash and 25 kilograms of bomb making ingredients - potassium nitrate, potassium chlorate, sugar paste and sulphur.

Giving details of the initial investigation by the agency, Mittal said the suspects had done a reconnaissance of vital government installations and planned to target political personalities and other important people.

"The level of preparation showed they were planning to carry out fidayeen attacks in near future," he said.

According to investigations, the module was founded about three-four months ago by Sohail who brought all its members together. They remained in touch through data-based messaging applications WhatsApp and Telegram.

Surveillance of suspected members of the group started after the agency got inputs about their plans.

Seeing their alarming pace of progress, the agency decided to bust the group with help from Delhi Police's Special Cell and Uttar Pradesh Police's Anti-Terrorist Squad.

The NIA believes the module has foreign-based handler(s) but their identity and location are still being probed.

"So far, no criminal record of any of the arrested members of the module has surfaced. It looks like they were self-trained and self-motivated through internet," Mittal said.

The officials refused to comment on media reports quoting other agencies involved in the operation that RSS headquarters and Delhi Police headquarters were also on the hit list.

"They (other agencies) can say whatever they feel like. But being the investigating agency of this case... we cannot make any such claim unless we have some corroborative material to support it," a senior NIA officer said requesting anonymity.

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Agencies
January 9,2020

Noida, Jan 6: A fire broke out at the ESIC Hospital in Noida on Thursday morning and firefighting was underway, officials said.

The blaze broke out in the basement of the seven-storey hospital building located in Sector 24, a police official said.

Fire tenders were rushed to the spot after the Fire Department was alerted about it around 8 am, the official said.

After that, a search was done to see if anyone was trapped in the building, he said.

The cooling process is now underway.

He said the fire had engulfed the ground, first and second floors of the building, except the basement.

Police said they received information about fire at Kaveri printing press at 2:45 am, when the manager Yogesh called them. The press owners have been identified as Atul and Anuj Goyal, residents of Sukhdev Vihar, they said.

The man who died in the fire has been identified as Phool Dev, from Bihar, who used to work as a help there. Dev went inside the building in the night to sleep before the fire started and died due to suffocation, the fire department official said.

The body has been kept at Lal Bahadur Shastri Hospital and the post-mortem will be done once the family reaches here, police said.

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News Network
March 20,2020

New Delhi, Mar 20: The four men convicted of the gang rape and murder of a Delhi woman on December 16, 2012 were hanged in the darkness of pre-dawn on Friday, ending a horrific chapter in India's long history of sexual assault that had seared the nation's soul. Mukesh Singh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar Singh (31) were executed at 5.30 am for the savage assault in an empty moving bus on the 23-year-old physiotherapy intern who came to be known the world over as Nirbhaya, the fearless one.

This is the first time that four men have been hanged together in Tihar Jail, South Asia's largest prison complex that houses more than 16,000 inmates. The executions were carried out after the men exhausted every possible legal avenue to escape the gallows. Their desperate attempts only postponed the inevitable by less than two months after the first date of execution was set for January 22.

They were hanged at 5.30 am, Director General of Prison Sandeep Goel said.

After raping and brutalising the woman, the men, one of whom was a juvenile at the time, dumped her on the road and left for dead on the cold winter night. Her friend who was with her was also severely beaten and thrown out along with her. She was so severely violated that her insides were spilling out when she was taken to hospital. She died in a Singapore hospital after battling for her life for a fortnight.

Six people, including the four convicts and the juvenile, were named as accused.

While Ram Singh allegedly committed suicide in the Tihar Jail days after the trial began in the case, the juvenile was released in 2015 after spending three years in a correctional home.

The road to the gallows was a long and circuitous one, going through the lower courts, the High Court, the Supreme Court and the president's office before going back to the Supreme Court that heard and rejected various curative petitions.

The death warrants were deferred by a court thrice on the grounds that the convicts had not exhausted all their legal remedies and that the mercy petition of one or the other was before the president.

On March 5, a trial court issued fresh death warrants for March 20 at 5.30 am as the final date for the execution.

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Agencies
February 5,2020

New Delhi, Feb 5: AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi on Wednesday expressed his suspicion over the government using force to clear the Shaheen Bagh stretch where an agitation has been ongoing for over 50 days against Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).

While speaking to ANI over the phone, Owaisi was asked that there are indications from the government that after February 8, Shaheen Bagh will be cleared.

In reply, he said, "Might be they will shoot them, they might turn Shaheen Bagh into Jallianwala Bagh. This might happen. BJP minister gave a statement to 'shoot a bullet'. The government must give an answer as (to) who is radicalising."

Further speaking about NPR and NRC, Owaisi said, "Government must give a clear cut answer that till 2024 NRC will not be implemented. Why are they spending Rs 3900 crore for NPR? I feel this way because I was a History student. Hitler during his reign conducted census twice and after that, he pushed the jews in a gas chamber. I don't want our country (to) go in that way."

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