ATS to quiz terror funding suspects

Court grants fiveday police custody remand of all the suspects

LUCKNOW: UP Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) will question the 10 terror funding suspects arrested on Saturday, over money trail and their links in Pakistan and Nepal after taking them on police custody remand.

The city court has allowed the police custody remand of all the suspects for five days on Tuesday.

“The court has allowed the custody remand from Wednesday morning. All suspects will be brought to the ATS office for quizzing after taking their custody from Lucknow district jail where they are lodged after the arrest,” said inspector general (IG) of police of ATS, Asim Arun.

He said the quizzing will be focused to further explore the terror funding network and other people involved in it. He said the ATS investigators will try to extract information about the money trail from outside the country to different places across India.

“We have extracted some information by retrieving the data of mobile phones and laptops seized from the arrested terror funding suspects. The suspects will be cross-questioned about the information found in their mobile phones and laptops,” said the IG and added, “There are some contact numbers in their mobile phones that are suspected to be part of same nexus”.

Arun said the suspects will also be quizzed about their links

› The suspects will be crossquestioned about the information found in their mobile phones and laptops. ASIM ARUN, IG ATS

in Pakistan and Nepal, as earlier two of them had revealed that they joined the nexus through relatives staying in Pakistan.

Earlier on Saturday, the ATS arrested 10 people from Lucknow, Pratapgarh and Gorakhpur in UP and Rewa in MP for their alleged involvement in terror-funding activities and seized Rs 52 lakh from various banks accounts.

Arun had said the arrested people had been entrusted with the task of supplying money to sleeping modules and operatives working for terror outfits in various states.

The ATS probe had revealed that most of the money transferred to these bank accounts was deposited by people in Pakistan, Qatar and Nepal.

The investigators say that four of the suspects were in direct touch with a Pakistanbased handler, who reportedly had links with terror outfit Lashkar e-Taiba.

They said the Pakistan based handler used to rope in people to identify bank accounts which could be used to transfer money and also make them open new bank accounts using fake ID proofs. The suspects allegedly used to get 10% of the amount transferred as commission.