Ajijur Rahman Sardar, a man from Bengal, chargesheeted by the Lucknow Police under the Explosives Act, was reportedly in a Bengal jail in June 2007. The Lucknow police, however, claim he was in the city carrying explosives handed to him by another HuJI operative, Babu Bhai.

According to information available with The Indian Express, Ajijur was arrested on June 22, 2007, in West Bengal, in connection with a case lodged on July 1, 2006, at the Tiljala police station of South 24 Parganas. His arrest was reported by the local newspapers. The same day he was produced before the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate, Alipore, who remanded him to judicial custody, it is learnt.

From Kolkata, Ajijur was brought to Lucknow on June 28, 2007, and has been in Lucknow jail since. The police claim they had recovered the explosives which Ajijur and two other men had hidden in the city.

According to the case diary, submitted by the UP police in court, Ajijur, Mohammad Ali Akbar Hussain and Sheikh Mukhtar Hussain had come to Lucknow with Babu Bhai on June 22, 2007.

Babu Bhai had asked them to wait at the Charbagh Railway Station and left, only to be caught by the police.

According to the Lucknow police, while waiting for Babu Bhai at the Charbagh Railway Station, the three men got to know of his arrest while watching TV at a tea stall. They went to a place near the SGPGI in Mohanlalganj, buried the 10 hand grenades, 10 detonators and nine rods of explosives at a construction site and returned to West Bengal via Allahabad.

... contd.