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Journalism of Courage
The statements of a weaver, a rickshaw-puller, pandal decorator, a homoeopath and a journalist helped the state Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) track down the nondescript electrical goods shop in Malegaon from where they recovered a huge cache of arms on Sunday night.
The team also arrested the sixth link, Abdul Gani, from Malegaon in the Lashkar-Toiba (LeT) arms haul case. Abdul is the son of the electrical goods shopowner Usman Gani. Police recovered 13 kg of RDX, five AK-47 rifles, 20 rounds of magazine and nearly 1,000 cartridges from Usman’s shop.
‘‘When we came home, the shop had already been raided,’’ said Usman. ‘‘We had no idea about the contents of those packages. All we knew was that one of our acquaintances had asked my son to keep the packets for a few days. And all this has happened just two months after my son started helping me out in the shop.’’
Sunday night’s raid comes a day after a cache of arms was seized at the Ankai fort area in Nashik district. ‘‘After our Ankai operations we knew that we had not recovered all the arms and ammunition,’’ said DSP (Nashik-rural) Rajyavardhan.
‘‘Interrogation of the five people picked up on Friday led us to the shop. We feel that the case related to the Aurangabad leads are over as far as Malegaon is concerned. But independent probes will continue to sanitise the region.’’
