Alwaght- An ISIS terrorist who was behind India's Bhopal-Ujjain passenger train blast was killed early Wednesday morning after nearly 12 hours of anti-terror operation in Lucknow.
According to Times of India the "mastermind" of the train terror strike has been identified as Atif Mujaffar alias Al-Qasim, a well-off engineering student from Aligarh and the self-proclaimed 'emir' (chief) of ISIS offshoot, Khorasan, in India.
Officials said Atif had placed the timer pipe bomb on the train at Bhopal railway station injuring 10 passengers, three of them seriously, when the train was reaching Jabdi station in Shajapur district on Tuesday morning around 9.40 am.
Atif was arrested along with Danish Akthar alias Zafar of Kanpur and Sayyed Mir Hussain alias Hamza at around 1.30pm at a bus near Pipariya in Madhya Pradesh's Hoshangabad district.
Mohammed Saiful , who was cornered police inside a house in Thakurganj area on the outskirts of Lucknow, and Danish Akhtar were Atif's deputies.
Danish had lived in Bhopal for a year taking petty jobs and was aware of the road maps in the city.
The operation to nab terrorists was being jointly supervised by MP ATS IG Sanjeev Shami and his UP counterpart Aseem Arun.
"Atif is a self-motivated jihadist. He was tempted by the Islamic extremism around two years ago. He came in contact with some of the extremists on internet and became a fanatic devoted to the Islamic State's cause," said an officer wishing anonymity.
He was in touch with international terror modules on 'Telegram' - a heavily-encrypted messaging app, built by a Russian developer, ensuring the privacy of users. 'Telegram' is increasingly being used by Islamic extremists.
Investigators have collected ample evidence against these accused. They have got the CCTV footage from the Bhopal railway station where three of them - Atif, Danish and Mir Hussein - can be seen walking out of the Bhopal-Ujjain passenger train.
Officials have also got hold of Atif's mobile phone. Atif used his mobile to send a picture of himself placing the bomb. "We have got significant evidence to take this case to a logical conclusion," said the officer.
The Khorasan unit of ISIS has conducted multiple attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan and has successfully managed to recruit a large number of youth from India. It claimed responsibility for the February 16, 2017 attack on a Sufi shrine in Pakistan that killed 90 people.
ISIS first used Khorasan in January 2015, when Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, the then spokesperson for ISIS, announced an "expansion" of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's "caliphate" into the "lands of Khorasan". Khorasan is the word used to denote the region comprising Afghanistan, Pakistan, parts of India, and other surrounding countries in Islamic history.
