On Wednesday the Election Commission announced that Gujarat’s assembly election would be held on 9th, 14th December and the results will be declared on 18th of the month.
Soon after the dates were announced, it was reported that Gujarat’s Anti-terror squad had successfully nullified a potential terror threat which was looming over the assembly elections.
As per reports, Gujarat ATS arrested two suspected ISIS operatives who were planning a terror attack in the state during the assembly elections. These two operatives were believed to have been in touch with the terror group via social media.
The two arrested have been identified as Kasim Stimberwala and Ubaid Baig Mirza. Kasim a resident of Surat used to work as a laboratory technician in a private hospital and Ubaid is a lawyer who also owned a hotel. The reports also claimed that these operatives were planning a lone wolf attack on a Jewish synagogue situated in Ahmedabad’s Khadia area. As per the police they were either planning a blast or planned to indiscriminately fire at the religious shrine.
Both these operatives are believed to have been in contact with Shafi Armar alias Zahed-al-Hindi, an Indian ISIS handler based in Afghanistan. As per the ATS officials, after the arrests, they also managed to recover cell phones, pen drive, laptops from the duo which will now be sent to a forensic laboratory to acquire details about their handlers and contacts.
Similarly on Wednesday, three men were arrested from North Kerala for suspected ISIS links. These men identified as Mithilaj KC, Abdul Razak KV and Rasheed MV were stopped from going to Syria four months back.
As per the Kannur police, they failed to reach Syria as they deported back to India from Turkey. As a result, the police closely started tracking their online activities which included being active on ISIS related websites. They have now been booked under the anti-terror law, Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.
We had reported a few months back how ISIS and its ideology was gaining a foothold in India, which included operatives planning attacks in various parts of the country and travelling to ISIS controlled territories to fight for the terror group.
