UP ATS wants to question him over Azamgarh links

A team of the UP ATS plans to interrogate Zabiuddin Ansari alias Abu Jundal next week on whether he had any links with the Azamgarh-based Indian Mujahideen

A team of the UP ATS plans to interrogate Zabiuddin Ansari alias Abu Jundal next week on whether he had any links with the Azamgarh-based Indian Mujahideen operatives allegedly responsible for several terror strikes. The Bengal police too want to question him over the contacts who helped him flee to Bangladesh while the Mumbai Crime Branch,Mumbai ATS and Pune ATS are keen to take him into custody.

Sources said investigations following the 2008 encounter in Delhis Batla House had revealed that Azamgarh-based IM operatives had executed the 2006 serial blasts in Mumbai,an attack for which Ansari is already being questioned.

Among the IM men arrested by the Mumbai Crime Branch is Sadiq Sheikh of Azamgarh,who was reportedly recruited by IM founders Amir Raza Khan,Riyaz Bhatkal and Iqbal Bhatkal and who later recruited other Azamgarh youths.

The ATS also wants to question Ansari on whether he had a role in terror acts by the IM in UP. The IM had triggered explosions in Varanasi in 2005 and 2006,on the Shramjeevi Express in 2005,in Gorakhpur in 2007,and in three district courts in 2007. Sources said so far,however,they have not received any indication from the Intelligence Bureau or the Delhi Special Cell about Ansari having had a hand in any of these attacks.