The Anti-Terrorist Squad of Uttar Pradesh arrested 10 persons and claimed to have busted a terror financing network being run by Pakistan-sponsored terror outfit Lashkar-e-Tayyiba.
The arrested persons were identified as Sanjay Saroj and Neeraj Mishra of Pratapgarh, Sahil Masih of PGI police station area in Lucknow, Shanker Singh of Rewa (Madhya Pradesh), Mukesh Prasad of Gopalganj (Bihar), Musharraf Ansari of Kushinagar, Sushil Rai aka Ankur Rai of Azamgarh and Dayanand Yadav, Naseem Ahmad and Arshad Naeem of Gorakhpur.
The police recovered Rs 42 lakh in cash, a large number of ATM cards, six swap machines, a magnetic reader/skimmer to steal data from ATM cards, three laptops, a pistol, 10 cartridges, several passbooks and cheque books and forged documents from them.
Giving details of the arrests, IG ATS Aseem Arun said that the ATS team raided four places in Gorakhpur, Lucknow, Pratapgarh and Rewa on an intelligence input and nabbed the miscreants.
“The team got important clues about their links with LeT when it grilled the miscreants,” he said.
Arun claimed that a Lahore-based handler used to spread the network of LeT in India and he was in touch with the accused through phone or internet. The handler used to ask them to open bank accounts on fictitious names for money transactions.
The accused were told to transfer cash in another account by their handler and the work was done by some persons working as agents.
“The agents used to get a cut of 20 per cent on the total money transacted. It also surfaced that the arrested persons often spoke to their handler with the help of Simbox network controlled by Pakistan,” the IG ATS said.
The arrested persons owned up their role in the terror financing network during interrogation.
It surfaced that Musharraf Ansari arrested from Kushinagar initially disclosed his name as Nikhil Rai. After hours of grilling, he broke down and came up with his real name.
The team also recovered evidence of data extraction through mobile phones of the miscreants.
“Some of them worked for the network out of greed while some others were really working for the terror outfit and were in contact with the Pakistani handler. The case demands a through probe and a team will scan the bank details to reach the brain behind the gang,” the IG ATS said.
“The gang also had links with Nepal-based extremist groups. Some of the arrested persons maintained that they were under the impression that they were getting cash through lottery fraud,” he said.
The role of bank officials was also being probed and errant officials would also be taken to task, Arun said.