The five Harkat-ul-Jehadi Islamia militants, who were arrested in connection with the serial blasts in Uttar Pradesh courts, have told the interrogators that they wanted to teach the state's lawyers a lesson for manhandling their outfit members.
Mohammad Khalid, Tariq, Sajjad Wani, Tariq alias Akhtar and Altaf Ansari alias Mukhtiar alias Raju told the interrogators that three courts - Lucknow, Faizabad and Varanasi - were chosen as targets after conducting recce, sources said.
An altercation between lawyers and HuJI militants had taken place at the Faizabad court premises in 2005.
The local bar association had banned its advocates from taking up their cases.
Last year, Waliullah Khan, the main accused in the Sankat Mochan temple explosions, was beaten up in the court premises at Varanasi.
Lawyers in Lucknow also manhandled two Jaish-e-Mohammad militants arrested last month.
Sources said that while Khalid had triggered the explosion in Lucknow, Tariq had done the same in Varanasi and Altaf in Faizabad.
During the explosions in court, Wani was very much present in Lucknow to oversee the operations, sources said.
In a joint operation, UP and West Bengal Police and central security agencies arrested Altaf from Baranagar area of West Bengal's North 24 Parganas district on Saturday.
They claimed, during the interrogation, the arrested HuJI militants had confessed that the consignment of ammonium nitrate and RDX was brought from Jammu and West Bengal.
The sources said that now the focus would be to find out the person, who had sent the e-mail from a cyber cafe in East Delhi, threatening more blasts in Uttar Pradesh.
