New Delhi, September 3
For the fifth time in three months, India has looked at Saudi Arabia for help to nab members its own home-grown terror modules and gathering more information on them.

In the latest development, India now believes the recently nabbed activists of a South-India terror module, including a doctor, a journalist and a defence scientist, had hatched the entire conspiracy to target nuclear and defence installations in the southern parts of India at the behest of their ‘handler’ based in Saudi Arabia. Sources confirmed that at least two of those arrested in the past one week had visited Pakistan and met top officials of the Pakistan spy agency, the ISI. Interrogations have revealed that a man in Saudi Arabia was coordinating the terror plan.

New Delhi will seek Saudi Arabian help in nabbing the handler, who has been identified based on interrogations of the arrested terror suspects. “His details will be shared with the Saudi Kingdom. The person needs to be nabbed immediately and he can provide the link as to who was funding the latest plan to attack defence and nuclear installations in India,” sources said. This will be the fifth announced case since June that India has asked for help from Saudi Arabia. So far, Indian requests have met with success.

The intelligence agencies believed the Bangalore terror module had been tasked by the ISI to recee nuclear and defence installations in the southern parts of India. 

Last night, Dr Nayueem Siddique was arrested taking the number of those arrested in the case to 18. The persons were spread across Karnataka, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh. Eleven of these were arrested from Bangalore on Thursday. The arrested persons include Muti Ur-Reheman Siddique, a journalist of an English daily.

Indian agencies have a good working relationship with their counterparts in Saudi Arabia and the deportation of Mumbai-attack handler Abu Jundal in the last week of June this year was the first major public instance of such cooperation. Jundal had a Pakistan passport in the name of Riyassat Ali and was deported from Saudi Arabia even as Pakistan tried to stall his deportation. During his three-year stay there, Jundal had built a network of anti-India persons. 

Just a couple weeks before deporting Jundal, on India’s request, another youth Fasih Mehmood was detained in Saudi Arabia. India wants him deported.