Fake currency dealer has LeT, al-Qaeda connection

Maharashtra Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) on Tuesday claimed that the arrested counterfeit currency operator Haroon Rashid Naik confessed  that he had met Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) chief Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi in Pakistan.

Naik was arrested in August last year at the Mumbai International Airport for possessing counterfeit currency. ATS was granted his custody last week.

The agency had sought custody on the grounds that Naik, through hawala, had routed around Rs 10 lakh for Naqi Shaikh and Nadeem Shaikh, arrested from Darbhanga district in Bihar, last month in connection with July7, 2011-triple bomb blasts in Mumbai.

In an informal chat with the media here, ATS officials alleged that Naik underwent training in camps called ‘Daura-E-Aam,’ and ‘Daura-E-Khas’ at Bhawalpur in Pakistan and met Lakhvi sometime in 2000.

Thereafter he went to Kandhar for further training called ‘Bait-E-Rizan’ in Kandhar in Afghanistan in 2001 where he reportedly met Osama bin Laden.