Lucknow/Bangalore, Feb. 10: A 27-year-old former management student from Bihar had plotted the New Year militant raid on the Rampur CRPF camp and participated in the December 2005 attack on the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, Uttar Pradesh police said today.

Shabbir Ahmad alias Salahuddin of Gandhwar in Madhubani district is “sharp, soft-spoken and extremely e-savvy”, additional director-general Brij Lal said.

The claim followed the arrest of six alleged Lashkar-e-Toiba activists from bus stands in Rampur and Lucknow this morning while they were about to leave for Mumbai, apparently to strike at India’s financial hub.

“The module had plans to attack the Bombay Stock Exchange and Churchgate area and another CRPF camp near Bareilly,” Uttar Pradesh police chief Vikram Singh said.

Officers said Shabbir, a farmer’s son, had joined a Bachelor of Business Administration course in Bangalore’s Presidency College in 2001 after passing his plus-two exam. But he dropped out the following year to join Lashkar, they said.

Two of his aides — Baba alias Jung Bahadur, 47, and Mohammad Sharief, 25 — are Rampur residents and helped carry out the pre-dawn attack last January 1 that killed seven jawans at one of India’s biggest paramilitary camps.

The other three arrested suspects — all Pakistan-based suicide attackers — carried out the actual operation, the police said.

One of them, Abu Jar alias Amar Singh alias Mohammad Buta, 20, of Gujranwala, told reporters: “We went to the CRPF camp to kill or be killed. We won the battle by succeeding in running away after the attack.”

His comrades are Abbu Jarar alias Fahim Ahmad Ansari, 21, of Rawalpindi and Abbu Sama, 22, of Bhimbar in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

Officers said Shabbir was one of the two militants who killed a Delhi IIT professor and injured four delegates during a seminar at the IISc, Bangalore, on December 28, 2005.

Shabbir had come in touch with Lashkar activists during his visits home from his Bangalore college, ADG Lal said. “He travelled to Pakistan for four months’ militant training. After his return, he formed the militant module.”

Lashkar then sent a militant from Nepal — identified by Karnataka police as Abu Hamza — for the Bangalore attack, Lal said. Shabbir, familiar with the city, rented a house there and organised the logistics.

The Karnataka police said Hamza fired the shots outside an IISc auditorium and Shabbir probably threw a grenade that didn’t explode. Both escaped to Pakistan.

The Rampur attack was planned after Shabbir’s return.