UP serial blasts: 2 HuJI operatives held

Lucknow, Dec 22 (UNI) A month after serial bomb blasts ripped through three district courts of the state, the Uttar Pradesh police today claimed to have arrested two Harkat-ul-Jehad-al-Islami(HuJI) militants for engineering the explosions.

One militant, Tariq, hails from Azamgarh district where he was a practising Unani doctor and was dealing with the logistics for terrorists, while Khaleed was a teacher in a Madarsa in Janpur district and is believed to be the prime conspirator of the seriel blasts in UP, sources said.

The Special Task Force(STF) of the UP police investigating the matter nabbed both the HuJI militants when they were moving to some other place from Barabanki railway station early this morning.

SSP (STF) Amitabh Yash said a huge quantity of RDX, detonators and other explosives have been recoveerd from their possession.

He did not rule out the involvement of the duo in other terror activity in the country either.

The STF was also investigating whether this module was behind the Gorakhpur cycle bomb blast on May 23, just after the Mayawati government rose to power in the State.

The near simultaneous November 23 bomb blasts rocked three cities of Lucknow, Varanasi and Faizabad, killing 13 people, some of them lawyers, and injuring over 70 others. Six low-intensity bombs -- three in Varanasi, two in Faizabad and one in Lucknow -- had been planted on cycles.

Earlier, six sketches of the suspected militants were released by the police, who were said to have purchased the bi-cycles used in the blast.

UNI