The Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) claimed to have foiled a major terror plot to blow up state-run Oil & Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) terminals in south Mumbai and a mall by arresting two people here Sunday. They were sent to police custody till March 18 by a city court.

ATS chief K P Raghuvanshi told reporters that the arrested duo, identified as Latif and Riyaz, were from Mumbai.

They were nabbed after a tip-off that they were allegedly plotting to blow up oil tanks of the ONGC and a mall in Mumbai, among other sites, Raghuvanshi said.

They were produced before a Mumbai court that granted them police custody till March 18.

Raghuvanshi said the duo had conducted a recce of the sensitive Nhava-Sheva area of the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT) and also its surroundings.

Police have also recovered several maps of Mumbai, Navi Mumbai and the sites they were planning to strike from them. They are suspected to have links with international terror outfits.

As per initial investigations, Raghuvanshi said they were trained in Pakistan and were in touch with some Pakistani terror outfits. However, he declined to identify the terror outfits.

The JNPT is among the most sensitive installations in the city and barely a few kilometres away from downtown Colaba, which was the landing point of the 10 Pakistani terrorists who had attacked Mumbai on November 26, 2008.

The ATS, which is carrying out further investigations into the matter, would also probe the duo's links to the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the February 13 Pune blast, their other associates in Mumbai and elsewhere in the country, he added