Mumbai: Four persons were arrested from Malegaon in Nasik district on Saturday in connection with arms seizure from suspected Lashker-e-Taiba militants in Aurangabad, even as another consignment of explosives was recovered from Manmad in the same district, police said.
The four persons from Malegaon were held on charges of assisting three LeT suspects arrested on Tuesday, taking the total number of those arrested in the case to eight, Anti- Terrorist Squad (ATS) sources said.
They were involved in changing the registration number plates of the two cars in which the LeT suspects were carrying arms and explosives, ATS chief K P Raghuvanshi said.
"By doing so they have also participated in the conspiracy hatched by the LeT suspects," he said.
ATS will invoke the stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) in the Aurangabad arms seizure case in view of the "unearthing of a bigger plan involving many people", ATS sources said.
Those arrested would be brought to Mumbai and produced before a local court. One Abdul Azim, who allegedly drove the car in which the LeT suspects were travelling, had surrendered before Aurangabad police and would also be brought to Mumbai on Saturday, they said.
Meanwhile, following the recovery of a car used by another group of suspected LeT militants near Nasik, the ATS seized one more AK-47, 200 rounds of cartridges and some RDX from Ankai fort in Manmad, police said.
Senior police officials said that the RDX seizure was biggest so far. The arms and explosives were found in computer cabinets, similar to those seized by the ATS from the LeT suspects, the sources said.
The suspected LeT operatives who abandoned their car near Nasik may have dumped the two cabinets fearing arrest, ATS sources said.
"We are most likely to invoke MCOCA. Our probe has shown that the case has all necessary ingredients to invoke MCOCA," Raghuvanshi said.
At present, the ATS has invoked the Explosives Act, but if MCOCA is invoked, it would give the ATS a shot in the arm, since the law provides for extended police custody for investigation as well as stringent bail norms, the sources said.
Since the arms and explosives were packed in 10 separate computer server cabinets, police suspect that the ready-to-use kits were meant to be delivered to different LeT teams, who might have used them for subversive acts.
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