New Delhi, May 17: In a massive day-long operation, the National Investigation Agency (NIA), in coordination with Punjab and Haryana Police, on Wednesday raided 324 locations as part of "Operation Dhvast" in eight states in terrorist-gangster-drug smugglers nexus cases.
The agency seized a huge cache of arms and ammunition, besides other incriminating material in the operation which began around 5.30 am. Several suspects were detained during the raids, conducted in Punjab, Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Chandigarh and Madhya Pradesh. While NIA conducted search operations in 129 places, Punjab Police launched searches at 143 places in 17 districts and Haryana Police raided 52 locations in 10 districts simultaneously.
The day-long searches were aimed at breaking the terror nexus of Arsh Dalla, a designated terrorist, apart from dreaded gangsters such as Lawrence Bishnoi, Chhenu Pehalwan, Deepak Teetar, Bhupi Rana, Vikash Lagarpuriya, Ashish Choudhary, Gurpreet Sekhon, Dilpreet Baba, Harsimrat Simma and Anuradha, said the NIA.
"The focus of today's raids was on weapon suppliers, financiers, logistic providers and hawala operators associated with the hardcore gangs working with drug smugglers and terrorists based out of other countries like Pakistan and Canada," the Central anti-terror agency said.
The raiding parties seized a pistol, assorted ammunition (both live and used cartridges), in addition to 60 mobile phones, five DVRs, 20 SIM cards, one hard disk, one pen drive, one dongle, one WiFi router, a digital watch, two memory cards, 75 documents and Rs 39, 60,000 in cash.
