IN A major breakthrough in the Varanasi blasts case, the Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force on Wednesday arrested six militants, including the main conspirator. All of them belong to a little-known, Bangladesh-based outfit Harqat-ul-Jehad al-Islami (HuJI).
The big catch was Wali Ullah, a former Jaish-e-Mohammed militant and now HuJI's area commander in Uttar Pradesh, who helped three Bangladeshi terrorists — yet to be traced — carry out serial blasts at the Sankat Mochan temple and the Varanasi cantonment railway station on March 7.
The other five HuJI militants arrested were Mehbooq Ali Mandal (from 24 Parganas, West Bengal), Syed Shueb Hasan alias Hamza and Farhan (both from Lucknow), Mohammad Rizwan Siddiqui and Mohammad Saad Ali alias Shaad (both from Jyotiba Phule Nagar). They were arrested from Gosainganj and Sarojininagar