Liyaqat was not going to surrender in Kashmir: Delhi Police

New Delhi : Suspected Hizbul Mujahideen terrorist Sayyed Liyaqat Shah, arrested for allegedly planning a suicide attack here, was not going to surrender under the Jammu and Kashmir government’s rehabilitation policy, theDelhi Police said Saturday.

Denying reports that Shah, 47, was going to surrender himself in Jammu and Kashmir, a senior Delhi Police officer clarified that he was to stage a suicide attack here very soon, not return to Kashmir.

“Shah was deputed for a ‘fidayeen’ (suicide) attack here in the capital. He was not going to take part in the J&K rehabilitation policy for surrendered militants,” said Special Commissioner of Police (Special Cell) S.N. Srivastava.

Shah’s wife Ameena Begum told IANS that her husband was returning home under the state government’s rehabilitation policy via Nepal after the authorities granted him his request to take advantage of the policy.

Shah, a resident of Dardpora village in Kashmir’s Kupwara district, was arrested from Uttar Pradesh’s Gorakhpur March 20 when he entered India through Sunauli border check post of Kathmandu where he flown in through Karachi.

Police Friday claimed to have averted a ‘fidayeen’ terror attack in the capital with his arrest. A court has sent him in 15 days’ police remand.

Going by his confession, police were able to recover an AK-56 assault rifle, three hand grenades, two magazines — each carrying 30 rounds, 220 grams of explosives, a Delhi map and a memory card from one of the rooms of a hotel in Jama Masjid area in Delhi on the intervening night of March 21-22.