"Jo apne desh ka nahin ho saka, woh hamara kya hoga?" asked slain suspected militant Saifullah's heartbroken and angry family, refusing to accept his body. The 23 year old youth was killed in a 13 hour standoff with security forces in Lucknow. Saifullah was accused of triggering a blast in the Bhopal-Ujjain passenger train on Tuesday, and suspected of being an Islamic State operative.
Police informed that he was a member of the Khurasan module of the ISIS, and was planning to attack a Sufi shrine in UP. The same group is also suspected to be involved in the blast on the Ujjain-Bhopal train in Madhya Pradesh. The militant operation that concluded with his death, began around 3.30 pm yesterday, when reports of the police hunting the two terror suspects hiding in the house, came to light. Local residents were asked to stay inside their homes.
The police learnt from neighbours that the house was rented six months ago to four young men by a man called Badshah, who works in Saudi Arabia. The men had told neighbours that they were students. Madhya Pradesh police arrested Atif and two others, cousin Danish and a friend from Aligarh, for their suspected role in the train blast that left 10 people wounded.
A commerce graduate, who had left home two and a half months ago after a tiff with his father, Saifullah informed his family that he was going to New Delhi for a visa to Dubai. Sartaj Khan, a supervisor with a tannery, remained unhappy with his son's addiction to WhatsApp, often scolding him, and even thrashing him in public in December, for his wayward ways. "He never listened to me," he said. "How can I bury him when he was against the country? I do not want to see his face."
Saifullah was accompanied by his friend Atif Muzaffar, who had around the same time, pushed his widowed mother into letting him go and work in the Capital. "I was scared of his anger. I asked him to join his brother in his dairy business. He left without telling me." Both the friends reportedly left Kanpur together. The friends would often meet on the banks of the Ganga, or at a dhaba on the highway. "These boys were fond of tea. They would down several cups. But they won't lift their eyes off their phones all the while. They watched quite a lot of videos," said the owner of the eatery.
Talking about his son's changed demeanour, Sartaj informed that he was a jovial person until his mother's death. "He will leave early in the morning, he will come late at night, if he was home I found him fiddling with his cellphone or the laptop he bought last year; he will not allow anyone to touch the gadgets, he will become hysterical even if a child touched them." Meanwhile Atif's temper was widely known in his family. His brother said he did not like being questioned. "He would get angry to a point that he can do anything," he said.
