By IANS
Lucknow : Two heavily armed fidayeen militants, said to belong to the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) and carrying a map showing directions to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati’s residence, were shot dead in a shootout with police on the outskirts of Lucknow Sunday morning.
The shootout took place at around 6.30 a.m., after sleuths of the Special Task Force (STF) of Uttar Pradesh intercepted the Maruti 800 car in which the militants were sneaking into the state capital, police said.
“We have recovered two AK-47 assault rifles with six fully loaded magazines, and ten high explosive grenades from their possession,” Brij Lal, additional director general of police and STF chief, told IANS.
“They were (from) a suicide squad. This was established by the fact that they were wearing ‘fidayeen’ belts with RDX tubes and battery operated detonators attached,” he pointed out.
What has come as an even bigger cause of worry for the cops was the recovery of a hand-sketched map (with markings in Urdu) of the road leading to Chief Minister Mayawati’s official residence at Kalidass Marg here.
The killing of the two follows Saturday’s arrest of two Harkar-ul-Jehadi Islami (HuJI) militants from Barabanki railway station, barely 12 km from the shootout site.
“We were given a tip-off on the movement of LeT militants a few days back when they were believed to have entered Uttar Pradesh via Nepal. Since then we had got on their trail and eventually our nine-member team led by deputy superintendent of police Ram Badan Singh got them here this morning,” said Brij Lal.