Two days after the Gujarat ATS arrested four persons from Gujarat, Delhi and UP for their alleged links to banned terror outfit Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), officials Thursday said that one of the accused had been working at a mobile phone repair shop in Chhijarsi village in UP’s Noida for the last one month. Senior police officers said that they had no prior intelligence about the 25-year-old, identified as Zeeshan Ali, who hails from Meerut. The ATS had said that the four accused were allegedly using social media to radicalise and recruit people, and encourage them to adopt extremist ideologies. Zeeshan had been seen frequently at Sainik Communication, from where he was picked up. Shop owner, Mohammad Asad, who is currently in Meerut, told The Indian Express that he had no idea about Zeeshan’s alleged link to the terror outfit. “I hired him as he belonged to a village near my maternal hometown in Meerut. He would be at the shop in my absence,” he said. Shopkeepers of the neighbouring shops recalled that Zeeshan would mostly play games on his phone. According to locals, on July 7, he had rented a room in Chotpur, just across the road. Khurseedha, the woman who rented him the room, said: “He paid Rs 2,500 in advance. I had asked for his Aadhaar and he had said he would bring it. He never really stayed so we had no idea what he was involved in.” Other residents of the area said they last saw him five days ago and claimed that he would often arrive on different bikes.
