Delhi’s Bhagirath Place market was terror target: police

Police said it was Shafqat who rented the apartment and Malik joined him later. It was there that they assembled an improvised explosive device (IED) to target the Bhagirath Place electrical goods market,but were arrested.

Investigators claimed Malik travelled to Pakistan last summer using a valid passport and trained for 40 days in “bomb-making and explosives”.

He returned to India in January after undergoing training at a Lashkar camp in Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK). Police sources said among his trainers was Abu Hamza,one of the handlers of the 26/11 gunmen.

DCP (Special Cell) Arun Kampani said: “The accused had been living in Delhi for the last two months and posed as students. They had conducted a recce of the market which was to be targeted by an IED which they had assembled.”

When Newsline visited the Tughlaqabad Extension building,a woman there identified herself as Kanchan but declined to speak about the two men. The building belongs to her husband Om Prakash.

“The two accused are residents of Sopore in Baramulla district of Jammu and Kashmir. They can be described as IED experts and one of them was indoctrinated and brought into the fold of the LeT in 2006 and the other in 2009. Since they are science graduates,it was easier for them to make the IEDs,” a police officer said.

Police said they recovered explosives,memory cards,mobile phones and passports. One memory card has a video from a training camp where they are seen assembling IEDs.