Saddam Sheikh, 38, was born a Hindu and later converted to Islam while living in Mumbai for about 20 years ago, according to ATS officials on Friday. He was detained by the UP Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) on July 1 for allegedly spreading the ideology of terrorist organisations on social media and his suspected connections to al-Qaeda.
Sheikh said he was born a Hindu, and that his name was Ranjeet Singh, during questioning that took place during his 14 days in police detention starting on July 8. According to Naveen Arora, ADG, ATS, the accused was originally from the Basedi village in the Gonda region of UP and abandoned his home in 1998 when he was 14 years old after his father beat him for stealing some property.
He said that Sheikh lived in Mumbai after escaping the home and converted to Islam after getting in contact with a Muslim family in 1999, when he was barely 15 years old. After returning to Gonda, Saddam Sheikh married a Muslim lady and began working as a truck driver for a company in Bengaluru. The ADG said that he had three children.
“Around three years ago, he started getting radicalised after being inspired by al-Qaeda and Ansar Gazwat-ul-Hind module and used to watch videos of terror attacks involving trucks,” claimed Arora. “Sheikh worked as a lorry driver for nearly two decades and was planning to use a truck to carry out an attack similar to the July 14, 2016 incident in France, where a 19-tonne cargo truck was deliberately driven into crowds of people, killing 86 people and injuring
Prior to this, the suspect had made two facebook accounts with the names Sayeda Mariyam and Sayeda Mahira. He used these accounts to publish radicalised content to approach terrorist groups and communicate with his Pakistani handlers.
In a group created on the messaging app IMO by his handlers in Pakistan and Kashmir, the accused, according to another officer, went by the name Hizbul Mujahideen Saddam. When Sheikh believed his wife was having an extramarital affair and intended to kill her and her whole family for it while attempting to get weaponry, his handlers began radicalising him.
Rizwan Khan, another terror suspect, was detained on July 2 in Lucknow for allegedly having ties to a militant group. According to ATS authorities, Khan, 23, had planned to carry out a significant terror act at the direction of his two handlers in Pakistan and J&K.
They said he was coordinating with his handlers through instant messaging applications to arrange a “lone wolf” attack—one carried out by an individual rather than a group—on Indian territory and that he had ties to Hizbul Mujahideen. A judge ordered that ATS keep Rizwan for 14 days.