The Bioterror Conspiracy

A Gujarat ATS raid uncovers a suspected ricin terror plot, involving a Hyderabad doctor with Islamic State links. Is India prepared for it?

- JUMANA SHAH

WHEN OFFICERS FROM GUJARAT’S Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) closed in on a silver Ford Figo with an Andhra Pradesh registration near a toll plaza on the Ahmedabad-Mehsana Road around 9:30 pm on November 7, they believed they were intercepting a gunrunning operation linked to a terror plan.

The tip-off was precise; the car had been under surveillance for some hours. But within minutes of stopping it, the team realised they had stumbled onto something far more alarming: a suspected plot involving ricin, one of the world’s deadliest toxins. It soon unspooled into a multi-state investigation, exposing India’s vulnerabilities to low-cost, high-impact bioterror.

Inside the car was Dr Ahmed Mohiyuddin Saiyyad, a 32-year-old China-trained doctor from Hyderabad. From him, officers recovered three pistol—two Glocks and one Beretta—and 30 live cartridges. His arrest quickly led investigators to two younger associates from Uttar Pradesh—20-year-old tailor Azad Suleman Sheikh of Shamli and 23-year-old student Mohammad Suhail Khan of Lakhimpur Kheri. The duo was picked up from a highway motel in Banaskantha, about 150 kilometres north of Gandhinagar.

The ATS soon pieced together the sequence. The weapons were first received in Tibbi, a borderside village in Rajasthan’s Hanumangarh district, and are believed to have been delivered by drone—a method now common in narcotics and small-arms drops from Pakistan. From there, Sheikh and Khan allegedly collected the consignment from an unknown intermediary and transported it to a secluded spot near Kalol in Gandhinagar, not far from the Adalaj toll plaza, where Saiyyad was later stopped after he picked up the package.