2 terror suspects ‘shot at’ after 9-hr Lucknow standoff

Police claim MP train blast link

LUCKNOW: Two suspected militants were apparently shot at in a house in Lucknow amid conflicting reports that police were trying to catch them alive after information that they were linked to a blast in a Bhopal-Ujjain passenger train on Tuesday.

Officers suspect they were operatives from an Indian module of the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group. After a nine-hour sporadic gunfight, police said the two suspects were wounded but still holed up in the house.

“We are not in a hurry … we want to catch them alive. We used chilli bombs,” UP Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) inspector general Aseem Arun said.

The ATS reached the cleric’s house in a thickly-populated locality on the outskirts of Lucknow around 2pm after specific inputs about militants linked to the train blast.

The commandos came under a volley of fire when they moved in, forcing the officers to use stakeout and stealth to get close to the militants. They were not sure how many men were in the house adjoining a mosque.

The commandos thought a lone gunman was involved, but a micro-camera drilled through the roof revealed the presence of another man.

Police were not sure if one of the suspects was Saifullah alias Saiful, a Lucknow resident and a member of the group that carried out the train blast.

The explosion near Kalapipal, around 80km west of Bhopal, in the train’s last coach left at least 10 passengers wounded. Among them were two teenage girls and two women.

Initially thought to be a tubelight burst, investigators found later that it was a low-intensity pipe bomb, an improvised explosive device (IED) that went off when it was being shipped possibly to a location in UP, where the final round of assembly polls are due on Wednesday.

Madhya Pradesh inspector general (law and order) Makrand Deouskar said ammonia nitrate was used in the bomb that exploded around 8.50am.