Lalit Jha, believed to be the key conspirator of Wednesday’s parliament security breach, has been arrested from Delhi.
Jha, accompanied by a man, reached the Kartavya Path Police station in the national capital on Thursday evening, PTI reported. He was handed over to the Special Cell which is investigating the incident.
Five persons had already been arrested in the case and the Delhi Police had launched a massive manhunt to nab Jha.
Some reports had earlier claimed that Jha was last seen in Neemrana on the Rajasthan-Haryana border.
According to police, it was on Jha’s instruction that December 13 was fixed to carry out the smoke scare in parliament; the date assumes significance as it was the 22nd anniversary of the deadly 2001 parliament terror attack.
Jha is a resident of Kolkata and a teacher by profession. Influenced by revolutionary Shaheed Bhagat Singh, Jha and others were highly motivated to commit an act which could draw the country's attention to them.
Meanwhile, a Delhi court on Thursday remanded the four arrested accused in police custody for seven days.
The accused—Manoranjan D., Sagar Sharma, Amol Shinde and Neelam Devi—were produced before Special Judge for NIA cases Hardeep Kaur by the Delhi Police in the afternoon.
All the four have been charged under Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) besides various sections of the Indian Penal Code.
In a major security breach on Wednesday, two of the accused—Sagar Sharma and D. Manoranjan—jumped into the chamber of Lok Sabha from the public gallery during Zero Hour and released yellow gas from canisters and shouted slogans before being overpowered by MPs and security personnel.
Around the same time, the other two—Neelam Devi and Amol Shinde—also sprayed coloured gas from canisters while shouting slogans 'tanashahi nahi chalegi' outside the parliament premises.
Police arrested all the four from the spot and later detained another man named Vicky Sharma at whose house in Gurugram the gang allegedly met on December 10 and planned the attack.
According to the investigators, Jha, Sagar Sharma, and Maoranjan had met about a year ago in Mysore where they made a plan to barge into the parliament. They later added Neelam and Amol into the plan.