During a media briefing, Deputy General of Police Vikas Sahay revealed that four terrorists arrested at Ahmedabad airport are natives of Sri Lanka and were indoctrinated by the Islamic State's ideology. These individuals, identified as Mohamed Nusrath, Mohamed Nafran, Mohamed Faris, and Mohamed Rasdeen, were instructed by their Pakistani handlers to execute suicide attacks in Gujarat.
The terrorists, who only speak Tamil and do not understand Hindi or English, initially traveled from Colombo to Chennai before arriving in Ahmedabad on Sunday, May 19. DGP Sahay detailed how the Gujarat police were informed about the terrorists' imminent arrival in Ahmedabad around May 18 or 19, either by train or flight. Police teams were organized, and a strategy was formulated to analyze passenger lists from trains and flights arriving from the south. All four terrorists were discovered to be traveling on the same PNR number via an Indigo flight from Chennai to Ahmedabad. Verification was also conducted in Colombo.
A subsequent search by the Gujarat Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) led to the recovery of three Pakistan-made pistols and 20 cartridges, which were found abandoned in Ahmedabad's Nana Chiloda area. This discovery was based on geo-coordinates and photographs retrieved from the terrorists' seized mobile phones.
DGP Sahay explained that the terrorists had been in contact with an Islamic State operative named Abu in Pakistan, who had assigned them the mission of carrying out suicide attacks in Gujarat and had provided them with Rs 4 lakh for bomb-making materials. Further examination of their phones revealed references to several locations near Ahmedabad that were potential targets for their planned attacks.
Sources also indicated that the terrorists were tasked with targeting significant sites related to Jewish communities and planned to carry out assassinations of certain Hindu leaders affiliated with the BJP and RSS.
