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The Maharashtra Anti Terrorism Squad (ATS) on Monday arrested an IT professional from Pune for his alleged terror links. Police have identified the accused as Zubair Hangargekar, aged around 30 years. A resident of Pune’s Kondhwa area, he worked in the IT sector.
A separate first information report (FIR) was lodged against him under sections of the stringent Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). ATS sources confirmed that the accused was among the 19 suspects whose homes and offices were raided by the ATS on October 9.
During the raids, the ATS had seized multiple electronic devices like cell phones, hard discs, laptops along with documents and literature from the suspects.
Incriminating videos and other suspicious material linked to terror activities was found in the electronic devices seized from the accused. The ATS then watched the accused, while he had gone to Chennai. The ATS sleuths laid a trap and nabbed him from Pune Railway station area on Monday when he returned by train.
He was produced before a special court in Pune. The court remanded him to ATS custody till November 4 for further investigation. A few more suspects were being questioned in the case and further investigation was on, said a senior police officer.
The ATS had raided houses of 19 suspects, including Zubair, following clues obtained during the investigation into the Satara robbery and terror funding case.
In July 2023, a team of Pune city police on night patrolling duty nabbed three suspects Mohammed Shahnawaz Alam alias Shafi alias Abdulla of Jharkhand, Mohammed Yusuf Khan and Mohammed Yunus Mohammed Yakub Saki, both from Ratlam in Madhya Pradesh, on suspicion of vehicle theft from Kothrud area, on July 18, 2023.
Alam allegedly escaped from police custody when the suspects were being taken for a house search in Kondhwa, but was later arrested by the Delhi Police in October that year. Khan and Saki were “most wanted” by the NIA in a case relating to the recovery of explosives from a car in Rajasthan in March 2022. A probe revealed that Alam, Khan, and Saki were residing in Kondhwa posing as graphic designers.
The state Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) took over the probe from the Pune police and arrested a few more suspects, including Abdul Kadir Pathan, an IT engineer, S N Kazi, and Zulfikar Ali Barodawala, for their alleged ISIS links. The investigation was handed over to the NIA on August 8, 2023, and the central agency named it the “Pune ISIS module case”.
Investigators alleged that the accused tested the bombs at a secluded spot in the Ghat section in Pune, along with certain locations in the forest areas of Satara and Kolhapur. In March 2024, the ATS then arrested Saki, Alam and Zulfkar Ali Barodawala in a separate case for allegedly threatening a Satara shop owner, Ashok Kumar, at gunpoint and robbing him of around Rs 1 lakh in cash. The fourth suspect Talha Liyakat Khan of Kondhwa was arrested in this case in June this year. Investigators have alleged that a part of the proceeds from the armed robbery in Satara was used by the suspects to purchase components to assemble a bomb and for terror funding.
Based on leads obtained during further investigation in this case, the ATS conducted raids on the house accused Zubair and other suspects at Kondhwa, Khadak, Wanavdi, Khadki and Bhosari areas of Pune on October 9.
