Suhail and his accomplices, had been monitoring their mobile phone conversations. Though the men used code language while conversing, the NIA team realised that the group had amassed enough explosives and their triggering mechanism to carry out a major terrorist attack. It acted swiftly and raided Suhail’s house in his native place in Amroha, Uttar Pradesh, where the group had been putting together these explosives. They recovered 5 kilos of potassium nitrate, one kilo ammonium nitrate, sugar paste in two plastic containers, sulphur, a pistol, and explosive- triggering devices such as alarm clocks, batteries, and remote switches. In subsequent raids at more than a dozen places, around 100 mobile phones, 12 memory cards, 65 SIM cards, 12 country-made pistols, cartridges and an improvised launcher were recovered.

The NIA teamalso found a video clip in the mobile phone of 22-year-old Zubair Malik. This, NIA sources say, was to be released after Malik and one of his accomplices, Anas Younus (21), would have died in a suicide attack the two were planning to carry out. The group had plans to carry terrorist attacks in Delhi and target prominent ‘Hindu’ supporters.

From one of the houses the NIA recovered packs of sutli bombs (Indian firecrackers made with jute twine wrapped around explosives). These, interrogation of the accused has revealed, were purchased to get the address of the manufacturer (from the label) so that explosives could be purchased from him in bulk.

From the analysis of the recovered data in the seized phones, the NIA has established that the Amroha module’s kingpin