Hunt on for LeT men who sought recruits in Muzaffarnagar

Delhi Police are looking for Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) operatives who tried to recruit new cadres in Uttar Pradesh's Muzaffarnagar district following the riots in September, an official said Tuesday.

Delhi Police, on the basis of inputs by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), registered in December a case of criminal conspiracy and membership of the banned terror outfit.

Acting on the information, Md. Shahid and Md. Rashid were arrested from Haryana's Mewat district.

During interrogation, police found that Rashid along with another LeT member went to Deoband and met Liaqat, a 58-year-old resident of Muzaffarnagar and a government school teacher, said Special Commissioner of Police (Special Cell) S.N. Srivastava.

Srivastava said both of them stayed at Liaqat's house for a few days.

Liaqat took the two to Thana Bhawan railway station in Muzaffarnagar district, where he arranged their meeting with Zameer, another resident of Muzaffarnagar, and left the place.

Another investigating officer told IANS that Zameer has a criminal background and he constructed mosques.

Police sources said Shahid and Rashid with the other LeT member had gone to collect scriptures from Muzaffarnagar to radicalise the riot victims to join the outfit.

Liaqat and Zameer belong to Muzaffarnagar but they were not riot victims, police said.

The duo told Zameer they want to kidnap people and demand ransom money for the construction of a mosque in the area. Zameer, however, backed off.

Rashid and the other person then went back to Mewat through Palwal.

Police later caught Liaqat and Zameer and recorded their statements.

A search is now on for LeT operatives Abdul Subhan, Aftab Ansari, Aamir Raza Khan and Jawed Baluchi, police said.

Sources said Abdul Subhan is wanted by Delhi Police as he along with Rashid was also planning to kidnap people for ransom for construction of mosques.

The September riots in Muzaffarnagar claimed over 60 lives, and displaced over 43,000 people.