Ricin Poison terror plot busted: Lucknow’s RSS building among spots surveilled by accused: ATS

The third accused, Dr Ahmed Mohiyuddin Saiyed,35, hails from Khammam in Telangana and his family stays in Hyderabad. His brother Syed Omar Farooq, who is in Hyderabad, said, “I got a call from (Gujarat) ATS in the morning informing that my brother was arrested… We never suspected there was anything wrong with my brother. His marriage failed four years ago… we thought he was depressed.” Farooq said the accused used to consult patients online and also run an eatery business in Hyderabad.

Regarding the role of Azad Suleman Sheikh (20) and Mohammad Suhail Mohammad Saleem Khan, a source in the ATS said, “The two men were radicalised, and had been in contact with a Pakistani agent for the past one-and-a-half years. On instructions of this handler, these two accused did recce of three locations — the RSS office in Lucknow, and the mandis in Azadpur and Naroda… The latter two because they are crowded areas.”

The trio was caught with nearly four litres of castor oil, three guns and 35 live cartridges which led police to suspect they would use the chemical agent ‘Ricin’. What the trio was planning to do with the ricin is “still being investigated”, the investigators told The Indian Express. The castor oil was seized from Saiyed’s car, from near the toll plaza on the Ahmedabad-Mehsana road at Adalaj in Gandhinagar earlier this month.

“The accused told us they were trying to extract Ricin from castor beans. They were still processing it, so, we cannot comment on how they would have used it,” the ATS said.

Asked about an “workshop” where Saiyed was said to have been trying to extract Ricin as well as what other evidence the ATS had collected that they were booked under the UAPA, an official said, “We are yet to recover all the things from the workshop and can’t divulge the details at this stage of the probe. However, we do have evidence in the form of what materials he procured and from where, his search history in ChatGPT and the search engine, and so on.”

In a Sunday statement, Deputy Inspector General of the ATS, Sunil Joshi, said, “To execute a major terrorist attack, Ahmed Mohiyuddin Saiyed had been preparing a highly lethal poison named ‘Ryzin’ (Ricin). For this purpose, he had begun necessary research, procured equipment, raw materials, and initiated the initial chemical processing required for its preparation. It was found this individual had obtained an MBBS degree from China.”

The ATS Sunday claimed Saiyed had told them that his handler was one Abu Khadija, from Afghanistan, said to be associated with the ISKP (Islamic State Khorasan Province).
-inputs from Nikhila Henry, Hyderabad

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