10 Naxals in UP custody, Delhi attack plans foiled

In 12-hour-long operation that began on Saturday evening and ended Sunday morning, the Uttar Pradesh police’s anti-terrorism squad arrested 10 Naxalites along with 125 detonators, explosives and automatic weapons from New Delhi’s satellite township of Noida.

The ATS claimed that the arrested persons were planning a major strike in the Delhi and National Capital Region in the coming days. The police is now also investigating their possible links with terrorist organisations.

Members of the Delhi police special cell rushed to Noida to take part in the interrogation of the arrested persons.

In the night-long operation, the ATS carried out several raids across Uttar Pradesh and arrested a total of 10 left-wing extremists, including Sunil Ravidas from Chaundauli in Uttar Pradesh, a former self-styled area commander of the erstwhile People’s War Group (PWG), who was once active in Naxal-hit Sasaram district of Bihar.

Addressing reporters, UP ATS IG Asim Arun said that the Naxals were identified as Ranjit Paswan aka Santosh, 35, from Chandauli; Sachin Kumar, 28, from Greater Noida; Ashish Saraswat, 18, from Aligarh; Brij Kishore. 22, from Aligarh; and Suraj, 22, from Bulandsher in Uttar Pradesh; as well as Pawan Kumar Jha, 25, from Madhubani; Krishna Kumar, 42, and Sunil Kumar Yadav, 25,from Sasaram; and Shailendra Kumar, 41, from Buxar in Bihar. The police said the accused suspects were operational in Bihar and Jharkhand.

He said that a watchful alert citizen had alerted the police about suspicious activities in his neighborhood, after which the police had started tracking their activities. They were staying at a second-floor flat in Sector 49 of Hindon Vihar (Flat 102, B23) for the past six months, pretending to work as property dealers, and had even opened two shops in the locality.

The police said the arrested persons were planning to commit crimes such as looting, robbery, ATM theft, kidnapping, extortion and contract killings to raise funds for their planned operation in Delhi-NCR during Diwali.

“We conducted the operation on Saturday night and arrested five persons from the flat in Hindon Vihar with a huge cache of arms and detonators. Based on the details of interrogation, the police conducted a raid on Sunday morning in the Sadarpur area and arrested four more Maoist suspects. In addition, one person was arrested from Chaundauli,” the ATS IG said.

An Insas assault rifle, pistols and huge quantity of explosives and detonators were recovered in the raid. “It is suspected the Insas rifle was looted from a securityman as the weapon is used by them against terrorists,” the IG Insas (Indian Small Arms System) is a family of infantry arms consisting of an assault rifle and a light machine-gun.

The police found three 32 bore pistols, one 09 mm pistol, three country-made revolvers, 60 cartridges (32 bore), 10 cartridges (09 bore), 18 cartridges (315) bore, two laptops, 13 mobile phones, four cars, one motorcycle and Rs 75,000 in cash from their possession.