PANJIM/VASCO: The unknown suspicious terror suspect who was caught at the busy Vasco junction with a laptop, five passports, a spy camera and a mobile phone, has turned out to the son of an Army Major General.
A senior official of the Anti-Terrorist Squad confirmed reports emanating last night of Sameer Sardana’s parentage. Meanwhile, a team from the National Investigating Agency arrived in Goa Thursday morning, and began interrogating Sardana, who was detained on Sunday night, when the Vasco Railway police noticed his very suspicious behavior, and formally arrested him on Monday.
The suspect had arrived in Goa in January and was staying at the railway dormitory room by booking the resting room on several occasions in the last two weeks. After detaining the suspect, the ATS officials handed him over to the Vasco Railway Police. Sardana was later booked under Section 41 of CrPC.
FRESH REVELATIONS
Here are some details emanating from his interrogation.
The ATS managed to crack the password of his laptop and decode emails and documents. It has been found that he was frequently surfing and downloading information about past bomb blasts in the country.
Sources in the Goa ATS revealed that from 2008 till 2016, Sardana had made 35 trips abroad to various countries including Cambodia, Vietnam, Jordan etc which are Islamic countries.
It is understood that Sardana had been making frequent trips to Goa on trains from North India, like Amravati Express and Goa Express, always traveling in AC compartments. During this visit, he checked into his dormitory room, booked online from an IP address traced back to Pune.
At times when the other beds of the dormitory were unoccupied Sardana, used to shut the main door of the dormitory and be locked inside for hours.
The caretaker of the Vasco railway station, told Herald, “I have never seen a passenger like him. He was very arrogant and demanding. Whenever he used to enter the room, he first wanted AC remote and then TV remote, for any delay in getting the same; he used to shout at me and show his muscles. But what surprised me was the way he used to keep the dormitory room locked from inside and used to take 15 minutes just to open the door as if he was trying to hide things from me.”
Sardana threatened railway officials, warning them not to question him or raise an alarm. Meanwhile, two ticket examiners of Vasco railway station, Yogendra Rathi and Kuldeep Kumar, have lodged a police complaint that Sardana had threatened that both of them would face “dire consequences” when they started questioning him on his suspicious behavior of spending hours on his laptop at the station without looking at or speaking to anyone, and not boarding any train and then confining himself to the dormitory by locking the main door on Sunday night. According to them Sardana was detained and questioned and released on Sunday night. However, when his conduct became more suspicious, the ATS was called in on Monday morning. The ATS then formally arrested him and has been interrogating him since.
It was also disclosed that Sardana, in the last two weeks, had booked the railway accommodation on six occasions, out of which he booked a single room once and a dormitory bed on the other occasions.
Sardana is based in Mumbai and has worked for multinational firms with postings in Hong Kong, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia. Police investigations have also revealed that Sardana, who is Hindu by birth, has been practicing Islam.
“We were not able to link him to any terror plot or any other terrorist organization. The problem is he is not talking and cooperating with the agency,” a senior ATS officer said.
Sources also said that the terror suspect is not consuming the meals provided to him. “It appears he is very health conscious and has only milk, fruit shake and water. He doesn’t like other food,” the source said. Sardana had 15 boiled eggs for dinner and nothing else.
