JALANDHAR: Three
Kashmiri students were arrested from an educational institute on the outskirts of
Jalandhar on Wednesday morning, allegedly with weapons, including an assault rifle and explosives. They were arrested in a joint operation by the Punjab police and special operations group (SoG) of
Jammu and Kashmir Police.
Punjab DGP Suresh Arora said that the three were part of a module of the Kashmiri terror outfit, Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind (AGH) and were nabbed from the hostel of CT Institute of Engineering Management and Technology at Shahpur village. Sources added that this is the first time in at least a decade that Kashmiri students have been arrested with explosives and weapons in Punjab.
The weapons were found in the hostel room of Zahid Gulzar, a resident of Rajpora, Srinagar. He was a second semester B Tech (civil engineering) student and was arrested along with Mohammed Idriss Shah alias Nadeem and Yusuf Rafiq Bhatt - both Pulwama residents.
This is the second arrest in a week of young Kashmiri men with alleged terror links in Punjab. On October 2, Punjab and J&K police had picked up a student - who belonged to Shopian - from Patiala, where he was studying. He was arrested for his alleged links with Adil Bashir Sheikh, a J&K special police officer who had fled with seven rifles from the house of a PDP MLA and joined
Hizbul Mujahideen.