Nepal-based alleged Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) operative Mohammad Umer Madni has confessed to have recruited 30 youths for the group since 2000.

Madni had been in wanted list of the Delhi Police Special Cell since LeT operatives Mohammad Ibrahim, Inamul Haque and Mohammad Abrar, whom he recruited, were arrested in Delhi in 2004. The Cell had recovered explosives and Pakistani documents from their possession and during questioning, they had named Madni.

The Delhi team had caught Madni from Qutub Minar area on June 4.

During questioning, Madni revealed the name of a hand he recruited and trained — Saleem — a resident of Aligarh, whom he had handed over Fake Indian Currency Notes with a face value of Rs 4.5 lakh and Rs 5 lakh to give to another operative, Ahmed of Patna. The Delhi Special Cell and Uttar Pradesh Anti-Terror Squad are now verifying the details.

The primary interrogation report of Madni stated that he had done his Maulviat (fazilat) from Jamia Salafia madarsa in Varanasi’s Revari Talab from 1969 to 1978.

Sources in the Special Cell revealed that the LeT operative told the interrogators that his father had shifted to Nepal and opened a madarsa — Jamia Salafia — at Janakpur Dham in Dhanausa district.

A native of Basopatti in Bihar’s Madhubani, Madni had shifted to Saptari district of Nepal in 1995, where he, too, established a madarsa that year and another in Kathmandu in 1996.

The report further stated that Abdul Khalid and Abdul of Nepal-based Salafi school Markaz-Dawa-Wal-Irshad had helped to send him to Lahore in 1997, where he was trained under Daura-e-Aam and Daura-e-Khaas courses run by Jamaat-ud-Dawa and Lashkar.

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