New Year's eve bash for 5 ultras bombs in Mumbai

New Year's eve bash for 5 ultras bombs in Mumbai
EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE

MUMBAI, DEC 31: It was a powder-keg big enough to detonate a section of the city. But thanks to party-poopers from the city Crime Branch, the New Year's eve bash planned by five subversives, bombed even as the rest of Mumbai burst into cheer to welcome the new millennium.

Following a tip-off that five suspected terrorists were in the city to incite violence on New Year's eve, the city police swooped on a hideout at Rajnagar in Jogeshwari (W) and arrested five subversives on Thursday. All five two of them Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agents and three Taliban militants are being held at the Crime Branch lock-up, where they are being interrogated.

The firecracker they had in store included the following: two AK-56 assault rifles, four TNT anti-tank shells, rocket launchers, large stocks of what is suspected to be the deadly Research and Development Explosive (RDX), six 9 mm Star pistols, nine pistols and five hand grenades.

Police sources told The Indian Express that four of the accusedhave been identified as Rafiq Mohammed, Abdul Latif Adam Momin, Mustaq Ahmed Azmi and Gopal Rambahadur Mann. The identity of the fifth is being withheld for security reasons. The Taliban militants, they say, owe allegiance to the Lashkar-e-Toiba militants group and are believed to be specialists in handling explosives. The raids were effected after the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) had initially tipped off the Crime Branch that Mohammed Hasan Mohammed Ali Ezazi alias Abu Ahmed, a key associate of Saudi Arabian billionaire and the world's most wanted terrorist Osama Bin Laden, was to carry out subversive operations in the region. The five subversives were discovered while police were hunting down Abu Ahmed.

Strangely, the city police claim that the five men are bank robbers, who had stolen Rs 7 lakh from the Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank at Borivali on October 6. They were at a loss to explain what bank robbers were doing with rocket launchers and RDX. The explosives have, meanwhile, been sent toballastic experts for examination.