House lauds terror suspect father’s stand

Ravi S Singh

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 9

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh today informed the Lok Sabha that the National Investigation Agency (NIA) would probe the terror case of bomb blast in a train in Madhya Pradesh in which 10 persons were injured and a related encounter in Lucknow in which one terrorist was killed.

Singh said while one terrorist, Mohammad Saifullah, was shot dead by the Uttar Pradesh Police yesterday, six suspected terrorists have been arrested by the Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh police.

The operation demonstrated effective coordination between the police and Central agencies. "Due to the prompt action of the police of the two states, a possible security threat to the country was averted", Singh said.

When Saifullah was cornered, he opened fire on the ATS team of Uttar Pradesh. After 12 hours of futile exercise to persuade him to surrender, the team stormed the house in which he holed up and shot him down.

As many as eight pistols, 630 live cartridges, Rs 1.5 lakh currency notes, 45 gm of gold, three mobile phones, four SIM cards, two walkie-talkie sets, and some foreign currencies were recovered from the house of the deceased, Singh said.

Amidst applause from Members, Singh informed Mohammad Sartaj, father of the terrorist killed in the encounter, has refused to accept his son's body saying "For everyone country should be first; if he could not be loyal to the country, how can he be ours".

He further informed that Sartaj has told the authorities that he “does not want to see his (son) dead face”. “The government is proud of him and others should also feel the same,” Singh added. The entire gamut of the development would be investigated by the NIA, Singh said.