Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Wednesday said that three suspected terror operatives owing allegiance to ISIS had placed the pipe bomb in the Bhopal-Ujjain train and then proceeded to send the pictures to their handlers in Syria.
“Luckily, the explosive kept in the upper berth blew up damaging the roof. Had it been placed on the floor, the damage could have been much bigger,” Chouhan said.
Chouhan informed that the terrorists, who hailed from Kanpur and Kannauj, had planned to rush back to Lucknow once their nefarious plans to set off the bomb had come through. The suspects came to MP in Pushpak Express from Lucknow and planned to return to Lucknow via Piparia-Jabalpur-Allahabad.
“They kept the bomb in the train at 7.30am and had set the timer in such a way that it explodes in two hours. Our ATS was in constant touch with central agencies and nabbed them. Ateef Mazaffar was their mastermind and Mohammad Danish and Sayyed Mir Hussain were also caught.
The three accused of planning the blast were nabbed by police from Piparia bus stop, hours after the explosion. The terror operatives being quizzed by the ATS and others were carrying gun powder when they were arrested.
The three men were seen in CCTV footage entering the passenger train with some suspicious article in their hand. Train tickets and blast videos are recovered from their possession. Interestingly, Hoshangabad police had confirmed inputs of their arrival and erected checkpoints to nab them.
Another suspect of the conspiracy Saifulla–an alleged ISIS operative of Khorasan module-was gunned down by Uttar Pradesh ATS in Lucknow’s Thakurganj area after an eleven-hour encounter on Wednesday.
Earlier, the passengers of the Bhopal-Ujjain passenger in which the explosion took place, claimed that the train had travelled hardly 300 metres from Jabri station when a fireball set off at the seat number 51 in the unreserved bogie and filled the smoke.
Panicked passengers yelled and jumped off the train and many of them got injured. Later, passengers of other bogies came there to help the victims who lay in the bogie with injuries. One of the passengers said that the train was running behind schedule otherwise the incident could have been witnessed on a crowded station.
Meanwhile, the security sources told CNN-News18 that the police were tracking online activities and chats of 12 UP boys who allegedly showed allegiance to ISIS.
“Core members are in custody and four are still absconding. After blast, their movements were shared with respective state police to catch them. Ujjain blast was only experiment. They did not want to be caught in UP and thought it was not possible to experiment due to high security during elections,” the source added.
