Ahmedabad: The Gujarat Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), which arrested three persons earlier this week for allegedly plotting a terrorist attack in the country using lethal poison ricin, is still trying to ascertain how pure, and therefore how lethal, the concoction was and how the accused were planning to use it.
A source closely involved in the investigation told ThePrint that Ahmed Mohiyuddin Saiyed, the 35-year-old doctor found to be running a ricin lab at his home and in his restaurant in Hyderabad had not completed the process of making the poison.
“They tried to make something. We have several questions. Firstly, how pure was it, which will determine how lethal it was. There are still no details on how they planned to use the ricin. They had started the process. We have given samples to forensics,” the official said.
“However, their process seemed to be perfect,” he added.
While the end use of the ricin is still not known, the accused had done a recce of three locations—the Azadpur mandi in Delhi, Naroda in Ahmedabad and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s (RSS) Lucknow office—the official said.
The Gujarat ATS arrested Saiyed on the basis of a confidential tip-off on 7 November, intercepting him at Adalaj in a silver Ford Figo car. The ATS confiscated two Glock pistols, one Beretta pistol, 30 live cartridges and about four litres of castor oil in a 10-litre plastic container from Saiyed.
Subsequently, the Gujarat ATS arrested two more persons—Azad Suleman Sheikh and Mohammad Suhail Khan—near Banaskantha in Gujarat. Sheikh hails from Shamli in Uttar Pradesh, while Khan hails from Lakhimpur Kheri in Uttar Pradesh.
Gujarat ATS officials said, it is perhaps the first brush of any law enforcement agency in India with ricin.
However, the group that the three accused were working for—the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP)—is known for brewing home-made weapons, and poisons such as ricin are commonplace in their literature.
The Gujarat ATS’ arrests in the ricin case came just two days before the Jammu & Kashmir police found almost 3,000 kgs of explosives in Faridabad, and a blast in a moving car rocked Delhi’s Red Fort area, killing 12 persons. Investigators, however, have not found any connection between the two cases.
The Gujarat ATS official quoted above said, “Until now we have found absolutely no evidence to link the two things. These two appear to be two different modules.”
He added, the ATS, which has custody of the three accused in the ricin case till 17 November, hasn’t found evidence for any more arrests in the case at this stage.
How the case unfolded
As per sources in the Gujarat ATS, Saiyed, who got an MBBS degree from China, appeared to be from a middle-class background, living in a 3 BHK rented apartment in Hyderabad’s Rajendranagar area with his parents.
He ran a modest restaurant in Hyderabad, employing 2-3 people. He was found to be actively involved with the ISKP on social media for the past two years. Saiyed had allegedly turned his home and restaurant into his laboratory.
“He had already begun necessary research, procured equipment, raw materials, and initiated the initial chemical processing required for the preparation of ricin,” the ATS official said.
He arrived in Ahmedabad on 6 November and stayed for a night in a hotel opposite the famous Lucky Restaurant in the city’s Lal Darwaza area.
A hotel employee who did not wish to be named confirmed Saiyed stayed the night, but said they did not know anything else about him.
Saiyed is said to have picked up the cache of weapons from a deserted location near Kalol in Gujarat. A man named Abu Khadija, a resident of Afghanistan, is said to be his handler in the ISKP, ATS sources said. Saiyed was supposedly also in contact with some persons from Pakistan.
‘Two accused from UP in charge of recce’
As per the Gujarat ATS, Saiyed and the two other accused from Uttar Pradesh were not known to each other and there was no direct connection with Gujarat either, other than the fact that it seemed to be a convenient common place for the exchange of weapons.
“The bag of weapons was the only thing found to be linking the doctor and the other two accused. Otherwise they had no direct connection with each other,” the ATS official said.
As per ATS sources, Sheikh and Khan seem to be from far more modest backgrounds than Saiyed. Both were madarassa educated, and did odd jobs, sources said.
As per the ATS, it was these two who did the recce of places in Delhi, Lucknow and Ahmedabad. They obtained the cache of weapons from Hanumangarh, Rajasthan. During interrogation, they said their handler sends arms consignments via drones across the Pakistan border.
Data, mobile phone details, contact numbers and location information found on Saiyed’s phone led the ATS to Sheikh and Khan. They searched several vehicles on the highway near Banaskantha towards Rajasthan before they intercepted the two, sources said.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)
Also read: Gujarat ATS bust ‘ricin terror plot’: What is ricin & what makes it so deadly