LUCKNOW: The Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) court in Lucknow granted seven-day police custody remand of Murtaza Abbasi under the provisions of Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) in connection with his alleged links with middle-East based terror outfits. Abbasi was arrested shortly after he attacked policemen at the gates Gorakshnath Temple and tried to storm in carrying a sharp-edged weapon on April 13.
Sources said the ATS had sought police custody of Murtaza to question him in connection with the leads that the investigators had gathered from central agencies and collate the data that forensic experts have recovered from the electronic devices seized from his possession.
"Data from the mobile phone and laptop of Murtaza has been fully retrieved. We will now question him on the basis of the data that we have got," said a senior ATS official privy to the investigations in the case. "We are now in possession of details like specific suspicious websites that Murtaza had surfed and need answers from him for the purpose behind visiting such websites," he said.
"As per the details of money trail that have been compiled, Abbasi had made some transactions which are questionable and some which need some clarity. We have to question him at length for it," the officer said.
The ATS had earlier sought 12-day police custody remand of Abbasi during which he was questioned at length on the basis of the primary evidences and his statements to the police immediately after he was over-powered at the crime scene itself. On the basis of his interrogation during the first police custody remand, sections of UAPA were slapped on him relating to terror conspiracy and raising funds for a terror outfit, among others.
On April 3, Abbasi – an IIT-Bombay graduate - had attacked and injured two PAC jawans, unprovoked at the gates of Gorakhnath Temple and tried to storm into the premises raising religious slogans when he was overpowered. Later, a three-minute video had also gone viral purportedly showing Murtaza Abbasi, claiming that he was disturbed by the ‘suffering of Muslim community during the protest against CAA and NRC’.
