The Uttar Pradesh Anti-Terror Squad is probing leads that David Coleman Headley, arrested by the FBI for allegedly plotting a terror attack in India at the behest of the Lashkar-e-Toiba, had contacts with Indian Mujahideen (IM) operatives involved in the 2008 serial blasts in Delhi.

ATS officials have found a UP cellphone number in the call details of the phone Headley used during his stay in Mumbai. This UP number was used by one of the two absconding IM operatives from Azamgarh, Dr Shahnawaz and Asadullah Akhtar alias Asadullah Khan, to contact Headley in Mumbai — two days after the Batla House shootout in Delhi on September 19, 2008. ATS sources said the UP cellphone went dead the same day.

Both Shahnawaz and Asadullah carry a reward of Rs 1 lakh, and are wanted by Delhi Police for their involvement in the September 13, 2008 serial blasts in the Capital.

Uttar Pradesh police first came across the cellphone number while investigating the Azamgarh network of the IM after the Batla House shootout. According to police, the number had been obtained in Azamgarh by faking an identity. Shahnawaz’s brother Mohammad Saif, who was held during the Batla House shootout, later told police that the number was used either by his brother, or by Asadullah.

Asadullah’s father, Dr Javed, is an orthopaedic surgeon in Azamgarh and contested the last Lok Sabha election as a candidate of the Ulema Council.

Sources said that Headley’s call details show he received two calls from this number. The calls were made from Lucknow two days after the Batla House incident. Until then, Saif had not cracked under interrogation. By the time Saif spilled the beans, Shahnawaz, who had been working at the Mayo Hospital in Lucknow’s Gomti Nagar, had disappeared.

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