The Uttar Pradesh police on Sunday arrested two persons on suspicion that they were allegedly planning to carry out terror attacks in parts of eastern U.P. and Lucknow ahead of Independence Day.
The U.P. Anti-Terror Squad (ATS), which made the arrests from two locations here, claimed to recover explosives from the two suspects.
The police claimed the two men were working for a local module of terror outfit Al-Qaeda. Additonal Director General of Police - Law and Order, Prashant Kumar, announced the arrests.
The ATS said it worked on tips that Al-Qaeda had sent its member, identified as Umar Halmandi, to India to conduct its activities. Halmandi operated from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, police said.
Halmandi was recruiting people to Al-Qaeda in the Indian subcontinent and radicalising them, said the ATS, adding that after identifying some people, he had established a Lucknow module of the Al-Qaeda, the Ansar Gazwatul Hind.
The two arrested persons were identified as Minhaz Ahmad and Maseeruddin.
