At least for an hour suspected terrorist Saifullah's brother and Uttar Pradesh Police tried to make him surrender even as he was hiding in a house in Haji Colony of Lucknow's Thakurganj area.
The invocation of Prophet Mohammad did not deter him to drop the gun. He was finally gunned down following a 12-hour siege and anti-terror operation that ended today morning.
His father Sartaj said the family will not take accept the body of an “anti-national”. “He left home two months ago after I had beaten him for not studying. Last Monday he called him up and said he is going to Saudi Arabia,” he said.
Sartaj said that what his son did was “not in the country's interest”. “We will not accept the body of an anti-national,” he said.
Top sources in the Uttar Pradesh Police told India Today that what Saifullah and his associates were planning was nothing less than “disastrous.” A senior police officer said the plans if executed would have been “catastrophic”.
All possible efforts were made by police to dissuade Saifullah but sources said he was adamant despite his family's intervention.
When Saifullah did not surrender despite persuasion by police, a meeting took place between top officers of the Uttar Pradesh Police to chalk out a strategy to discourage him from resisting security forces.
Police by then had managed to identify Saifullah's relatives and decided to rope them in to talk him into surrendering.
Senior police officers opened channels of communication and made his Kanpur-based brother Khalid speak to him for at least one hour.
Saifullah, however, was not receptive; rather he was hostile and did not respond. He was “screaming that he wanted to die”.
His brother Khalid then tried to bring in their father Sartaj to talk to him. Sartaj was in tears and tried his best to convince him but in vain. He told Saifullah that he should devote himself to studies and not terror activities.
