“He has been acting as a conduit for the LeT and was made in-charge of Jharkhand for the purpose of selecting men and sending them to Pakistan occupied Kashmir for training in terror activities. These men were supposed to come back to India and carry out terror strikes,” contended public prosecutor Rajeev Mohan.

Kamal Ansari, an accused in Mumbai train blasts of 2006, was allegedly one of Madni’s recruits. According to the police, he had also travelled to Bangladesh, Pakistan and Qatar in connection with unlawful activities.

According to the police, Madni, who had established a base in Nepal, had been wanted by Indian security agencies for quite some time after his name came up following the arrest of three militants in 2002. These three men were convicted for terror activities by a Delhi court in 2005, added the prosecutor.

Madni used to interact with his associates using his email accounts. He, however, never emailed them messages but used to save them in draft format and his associates, who knew the password of his email account, would read it and delete it so that technical detection by the security agencies could be averted, alleged the prosecutor.

Mohan told the court that the police was trying to break into his email accounts and collect more information from his diaries, which were being deciphered as the text was in Urdu and Arabic.

The police said he had received funds from Italy to carry out terror activities in India and an initial probe relating to his bank account in Nepal revealed that Rs 25 lakh was recently transacted through this account. “We had taken him to Patna and Aligarh to ascertain his links with other operatives of militant organisations and a further remand is sought to take him to Jharkhand and Rajasthan to get new leads,” said the prosecutor.   

Metropolitan Magistrate Manish Yaduvanshi allowed the plea and granted another seven days of police remand to the Special Cell. During the hearing, the magistrate asked Madni if he wanted to say anything. “I am guilty and a sinner. Please, send me to jail,” he responded.