Cops of Maharashtra and Gujarat are awaiting Mohammad Aslam. He may be just 25-year-old, but Aslam is no small fry; he is a databank.
Aslam alias Saleem was picked up by the Delhi Police with detonators and five kilograms of RDX. During interrogation it was revealed that he was in India to activate sleeper cells and to undertake recruitments in the country.
An investigating official told rediff.com that prima facie it did not appear that Aslam had come down to carry out attacks in the country on his own. He was here to carry out large-scale recruitments.
However, police officials say they have not taken his version as gospel. We are probing why he had explosives with him and where was he taking it. Prima facie, it appears that he was headed to Nanded in Maharashtra. This conclusion has been based on the ticket to Nanded that Aslam had on him.
Anti-Terrorist Squad sources say they are also trying to find out details about Aslam's brother, who too was recruiting jihadis in India. The duo was handpicked by the Lashkar-e-Tayiba a couple of years after the Gujarat riots. They have been actively involved in the recruitment process in Gujarat and Aurangabad.
There is also suspicion that the two brothers could have masterminded the blasts at the Kalapur railway station in Gujarat in 2006.
Aslam has been missing from the radar of the Indian security agencies since the past three years. There is not much data on him. However, whatever little data created was derived only after two accused in the Gujarat case blurted out his name.
Aslam, who was initially recruited for operations in Gujarat, had trained in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir under Lashkar. At first, he was asked only to focus on the recruitment process. However, during his second stint, he was given training in arms and ammunition, which he used to execute the blasts in Gujarat.
Following this, he was asked to return to the Lashkar camp where he was asked to lay low for some time. The IB says that that the Lashkar decided to send him back to India when things cooled down. They also took their chance knowing that there was not much information on him and hence decided to send him into India in order to set up base in places where they thought they were losing a hold on.
