"These are three members of a bandit group reporting immediately to Basayev: Visali, Timur, and Khanpashi Mudushev," Shabalkin said.
The police detained the militants in checking an informer's report, he said. When interrogated, the detainees admitted their involvement in crimes.
In Chechen capital Grozny the police found a cache with a roadside bomb and weapons, a source in the Chechen Interior Ministry told RIA Novosti.
"The police and Russian Interior Ministry Force's military commandant's men have found a cache in an abandoned house," the source said.
The cache contained a Kalashnikov assault rifle and 75 5.45-mm cartridges.
"There were a bomb and a grenade there as well, both self-made. They have been disposed of on the spot," the source added.
According to him, the police found another cache in the village of Oktyabrskoye, Grozny district, in a similar operation to seize two Kalashnikov assault rifles and 270 5.45-mm cartridges.
Another source in the Chechen Interior Ministry also said that on November 13 six unidentified men wearing masks and DPMs broke into a house of a local resident in the village of Kyu-Benoi, Kurchaloi district, and abducted him at gunpoint," the source said. An investigation has been launched into the case.