Mumbai: The Maharashtra Anti-Terror Squad arrested 9 men from Aurangabad, Mumbra over alleged links with Islamic State terror group on Wednesday. The arrests came after massive raids were conducted by the ATS squad at five locations in Aurangabad, Mumbra and Thane districts. The men were brought for questioning and later arrested.

According to news agency ANI, the Maharashtra ATS has recovered certain chemicals, powder, mobile phones, hard drives SIM cards, acid bottle, sharp knives etc seized during searches. A case under Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act 1967 has been registered against the men and the further investigation is underway.

The arrests come after a massive search operation conducted by the National Investigation Agency in December last year. At that time, the officials had conducted raids at 16 location in areas such as Hapur, Ghaziabad, Amroha in Uttar Pradesh and Zaffrabad in Delhi. As many as 10 individuals were arrested after the NIA operations. The probe agency had said that they accused were planning to attack crowded places and had senior political personalities as their targets . The fairly-new group was identified as 'Harkat-ul-Harb-e-Islam’.

NIA inspector general Alok Mittal told reporters that searches were carried out in Delhi's Seelampur locality, UP's Lucknow, Amroha and Hapur districts where a huge quantity of explosives, a country-made rocket launcher, 100 mobiles and 135 SIM cards were recovered.