Mumbai: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders and BJP offices in Maharashtra were on prime target of the ISIS suspected terrorist Zoheb Khan. It was revealed during the interrogation of the arrested suspect with the National Investigation Agency (NIA) that ISIS had instructed Zoheb Khan to execute the target killing of the BJP leaders and also plan attacks on the BJP offices to ensure mass killing.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) had recently arrested terror suspect Zoheb Khan from Maharashtra's Chatrapati Sambhaji Nagar (Aurangabad). Following his arrest, he disclosed that he was in touch with ISIS handlers based in Afghanistan.

Zoheb was planning to flee to Syria

Sources from the probe agency confirmed that Zoheb Khan, who took Bayath (Pledging Allegiance) recorded a video of him taking pledge and had sent it to his handler Abu Ahmed based in Afghanistan.

Allegedly, Abu Ahmed had asked Zoheb Khan to contact two other suspected members of the outfit to procure arms and ammunition. Zoheb had established contact with the two on the Telegram ID named as Anas Al Hindi and Anal Al Hindi. Not only this he was assigned to keep a watch on BJP leaders and target BJP offices in Maharashtra.

Zoheb was also given a code word "Samaan Chahiye (Need Stuff / Stock)” by Abu Ahmed in order to procure weapons, sim cards.

He also revealed during the interrogation to the NIA that he had sent the same message on the Telegram IDs, following which he was assured that he will receive the stuff soon.

Sources further said that the team of the NIA are trying to track the sleeper cell, to whom the messages were sent. Moreover, they're also doing technical analysis of the devices recovered from Zoheb. The agency is also checking the travel history of Zoheb and trying to ascertain the details about the persons associated with him.

It came to fore during the investigation that Zoheb had plans to flee to Syria after meeting his handler in Afghanistan.

The probe agency took the statement of Zoheb’s wife after he claimed that his wife and children had also taken ‘Bayath’ with him in 2021. However, his wife later parted ways from him and got separated from him along with children.