UP Anti-Terrorist Squad will question alleged terror operatives Shareef and Mohammad Kausar to ascertain whether Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) suspect Mohammad Saleem Khan had a role in the Rampur CRPF camp attack on January 1, 2008. Shareef and Kausar are presently lodged in Bareilly jail and both are accused in the case.
Khan, who was on a seven-day police custody remand that ended on Thursday, reportedly confessed to having attended LeT training camps along with Shareef and Kausar at Muzaffarabad in Pakistan in 2007. He, however, denied any role in the Rampur CRPF camp attack.
Saleem, who was arrested from Mumbai airport recently, is believed to have claimed that he had left the camp even before LeT commanders had planned the attack. He had even denied involvement in any LeT attacks in India, informed an ATS official.
“We would be now moving court to obtain permission to interrogate Shareef and Kausar inside the jail to verify the information provided by Saleem,” said SSP, ATS, Prabhakar Chaudhary.
Kausar and Shareef had told the cops about Saleem’s presence at the camp, but had not spoken of his role in the 2008 attack in which seven CRPF men and a rickshaw puller were killed.
A native of Fatehpur, Saleem Khan was caught soon after he landed at Mumbai airport from the UAE on July 16. He was arrested on charges of sending money to alleged ISI spy Aftab Ali, who was arrested from UP’s Faizabad district in May this year.
