25 terrorists nabbed in 2011

While the previous year witnessed stray incidents of arrests of a handful of operatives, 50 men drawn from different departments and with a knack for anti-terror operations busted terror modules in their entirety in 2011.

While the previous year witnessed stray incidents of arrests of a handful of operatives, 50 men drawn from different departments and with a knack for anti-terror operations busted terror modules in their entirety in 2011.

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Pushed into the fray as late as September this year, immediately after a blast rang through the Delhi high court, a special team scanned the length and breadth of the country to bring the Indian Mujahideen (IM) to its knees in a blitzkrieg operation. “Terror operations take time. They aren’t like normal crime incidents where the criminals are known,” commissioner BK Gupta told HT.

The team’s first breakthrough came in November when seven members of an IM sleeper cell, involved in the Chinnaswamy Stadium, Pune German Bakery blasts and the Jama Masjid attack were nabbed from Chennai.

While Shahrukh Bhatkal, the link between IM module based in Samastipur and tthe Bhatkal Brothers — Riyaz and Iqbal, based in Karachi, managed to slip away, an arms factory used by the module was tracked and sealed.

As opposed to 18 people, a majority of whom belonged to banned outfits were nabbed in 2010, 25 full-blown terrorists were nabbed in 2011.