Banaskantha, July 6 (IANS) The Gujarat Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) on Monday took three of the eight accused arrested in the alleged Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) module case to Bhagal village in Palanpur of Banaskantha district, as part of its ongoing investigation during police remand.
According to the sources, the visit was undertaken to reconstruct the sequence of events, verify evidence gathered during the investigation and corroborate information obtained from the accused following their arrest.
The three accused taken to the village were identified as Ibrahim Mohammad Hussain Ghagha, Mudassir Abdullah Ghazivala and Ahmed Abdullah Ghazivala. Police said the three are closely related, with Ahmed and Mudassir being brothers and Ibrahim their maternal uncle.
The development comes days after the ATS arrested eight accused from Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh, alleging that they were associated with the banned Pakistan-based terrorist organisation Jaish-e-Mohammed and had formed a local module named “Dar-ul-Islam Gujarat Jaish-e-Mohammed”.
All eight accused have been booked under Sections 13, 17, 18, 38 and 39 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, along with Sections 61 and 148 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023.
A court subsequently remanded them to 14 days’ police custody.
During a press conference following the arrests, ATS DIG Sunil Joshi said: “The group had been attempting to establish a trusted network in Gujarat that could provide logistical support to Jaish-e-Mohammed if required in the future. The investigation had not revealed any specific attack target.”
Investigators claimed that the accused were in contact with Pakistani handlers identified as Abdullah and Mohammad Umar, had translated Jaish-e-Mohammed literature into Gujarati to spread the organisation’s ideology, and had received around Rs 3 lakh through a dead-drop method, part of which was allegedly used to purchase a second-hand vehicle.
The ATS also alleged that Ahmed and Ibrahim played leading roles in the module and had met an unidentified intermediary from Kashmir in Vadodara on the instructions of a Pakistani handler.
Investigators have said they recovered mobile phones, handwritten letters, books, digital files, translated literature and other material during the raids and are continuing to analyse the evidence.
The reconstruction exercise at Bhagal village forms part of the ATS’s efforts to verify the movements of the accused, establish the chronology of the alleged conspiracy and corroborate evidence collected during the investigation.
Further investigation is underway.
–IANS
mys/uk