The Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) of Maharashtra police arrested a  Laskkar-E-Taiba (LeT) operative from Jammu and Kashmir on Thursday. The accused, Aftab Hussain Shah, 28, was in direct contact with his handlers in Pakistan and was planning to carry out different terror activities across India.

The Maharashtra ATS earlier arrested Junaid Mohammed from Pune who was recruiting people through social media on the instructions of Shah. The ATS has found five different Facebook accounts which Junaid has used to recruit people to carry out terror activity and recce different sensitive locations including defence establishments. “During the probe we found that his handlers are in J&K, accordingly our team was deployed last month. The team worked for almost a week and with the help of local police successfully nabbed a handler,” a senior officer said.