Mumbai: The Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad has detained a doctor from Aurangabad for allegedly providing financial assistance to the ISIS terror group in Jammu & Kashmir.
Earlier, the Maharashtra ATS had arrested nine youths ahead of Republic Day, for their alleged links to the ISIS group. The arrested youths had revealed the doctor’s role during interrogation. ATS officials have been questioning him for the last three days and suspect him to be involved in a conspiracy to poison food and water meant for security forces.
An ATS official said, “During the questioning of these youths, it was revealed that they had collected a huge sum of money to send to their ISIS handler, who was in Jammu & Kashmir. The money was sent to him through online bank transactions, from an account held by the Khultabad-based doctor.” On Saturday evening, a team from the Maharashtra ATS was sent to Khultabad, 26km away from Aurangabad, and the doctor was taken into custody for questioning.
The doctor, whose identity has not been revealed by the ATS officials, has been in police custody for three days and is being questioned to establish his role in the plot. Earlier in January, intelligence agencies had sounded alerts over the plans of the Pakistani Military Intelligence and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to poison food supplied to the Indian armed forces.
However, the Maharashtra ATS is still trying to ascertain the main target of the arrested youths. In a series of raids carried out in January, the Maharashtra ATS had arrested five persons from Mumbra and Thane, while four were held from Aurangabad.
According to the ATS, the arrested youths had allegedly planned mass poisoning at a public event. The ATS had found several chemicals in the houses of these youths, including a few bottles labelled ‘hydrogen peroxide’, knives and other gadgets. Sources said political rallies, religious programmes and marriages of known personalities were on their target list.
