May 3: The Hyderabad police on Monday caught a Lashkar-e-Tayyaba operative who it claimed was planning to carry out attacks in crowded city areas to coincide with the verdict in the Ajmal Kasab case in Mumbai.
The police said the LeT operative, Mohammed Zia-ul-Haq alias Abu Abdullah, 34, was part of a sleeper cell and was also responsible for a cinema hall blast in May 2006.
Haq was caught after sleuths intercepted a conversation with his handlers in Pakistan who asked him to do something “sensational” in Hyderabad. The police seized two Chinese grenades and a 7.4 mm Chinese pistol with six rounds from him.
Haq was working as a cab driver with several travel companies, the police said. On instructions from his LeT boss, Abdul Aziz, he surveyed Hitec City, the Imax theatre and Shamshabad airport to pick a possible target. City police commissioner A.K. Khan said investigations were on to determine if he had any other local help.
While a student, he had migrated to Saudi Arabia on a work permit, and is suspected to have attended radical religious discourses there.
He later got in touch with Abu Ali, a Pakistani, who introduced him to Aziz, a LeT commander. He was indoctrinated and sent to Pakistan for training in 2002.
“He was trained in the LeT camp for a month on handling AK-47s and explosives,” the police commissioner said.