Delhi Police with the accused on Saturday.A suspected ISIS operative was arrested, and two Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) were seized by the Special Cell of Delhi Police after a brief encounter in Ridge Road area late on Friday. Police said the accused was a lone wolf and was planning an attack in the national capital.
Briefing reporters on Saturday morning, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Special Cell) Pramod Singh Kushwaha said six rounds of fire were exchanged before the ISIS agent, who was later identified as identified as Abdul Yusuf Khan, was held. A pistol was also seized from the accused.
“The accused, who is a resident of Uttar Pradesh, was arrested after an exchange of fire from Ridge Road between Dhaula Kuan and Karol Bagh. We have recovered a pistol and two IEDs from him,” the officer said.
“For the last few months, a team of New Delhi Range was tracking his movement. On Friday evening, they learnt that he would be coming to the Ridge area. Acting on this information, a trap was laid and the accused was arrested after six rounds of firing,” a senior police officer said.
A bomb disposal team of the National Security Guard was called in to defuse the IEDs.
The incident comes days after an ophthalmologist, who allegedly worked briefly with the Islamic State in Syria in 2014, was arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in Bengaluru. He was arrested as part of an investigation into a case registered in March against the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) module.
The NIA, with the assistance of the Karnataka Police, arrested Abdur Rahman, 28, an ophthalmologist at the MS Ramaiah Hospital in Bengaluru, on the charge of conspiring with Jahanzaib Sami Wani of J&K.
Wani and his wife, Hina Bashir Beigh, were arrested earlier by the NIA in New Delhi for allegedly carrying out ISIS activities in India.
Investigators have revealed that Rahman was part of a group of youths from well-off families in Bengaluru who travelled to Syria in the early days of the formation of Islamic State in 2013-14.