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9 arrested in Bangalore serial blasts case

Staff Reporter

They belong to a radical group in Kerala; several “incriminating documents” seized

— Photo: V. Sreenivasa Murthy

The eight accused in the Bangalore serial blasts were produced before the press at the Office of the Commissioner of Police in Bangalore on Saturday.

Bangalore: The Bangalore police have arrested nine men from a radical group in Kerala in connection with the July 25 serial bomb blasts in which a woman was killed and eight persons were injured. Most of the arrested had been named in the charge-sheet filed by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Kerala Police before the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Court at Thalassery there.

Karnataka Director-General and Inspector-General of Police (DG-IGP) Ajay Kumar Singh said the men were Abdul Sattar alias Sainuddin (57), his son Sarfuddin (28), Abdul Jabbar (35), Mujeeb Mohiddin (26), Faizal Abdul Rehman (24), Abdul Jaleel Moosa (35), Manaf Mohammad alias Rahees (23), Badruddin Noor Ahmed (28) and Sakariya (21).

“They were arrested for their alleged involvement in the serial blasts, and we have confiscated several incriminating articles and documents from them,” Mr. Singh told presspersons here on Saturday.

The top brass of the department, including City Police Commissioner Shankar Bidari, Joint Commissioner (Crime) Gopal Hosur, and Additional Commissioner (Law and Order) M.R. Poojar were present.

However, the officials refused to divulge information about the mastermind of the blasts and which terror outfit the accused worked for.

According to the officials, four others from Kerala — Abdul Raheem, son-in-law of Abdul Sattar, Mohammad Fayas Hamsa, Fayis Abdul Rahaman and Mohammad Yasin alias Rimon — who were also involved in the case — were killed in an encounter with the Indian Army in Jammu and Kashmir when they were attempting to cross over to Pakistan between October 4 and October 7 in 2008.

The officials of the Corps of Detectives and Bangalore City Police had camped in Kerala for weeks together to pursue their investigation. “We finally tracked down Sattar, an electrician of Malappuram and shared the information with the Andhra Pradesh police. Later, on January 20 he was arrested at his hideout in Hyderabad. He helped us arrest the others involved in the blasts which was the second major terror attack on Bangalore,” the police said.

Investigations revealed that the terrorists had formed a unit, the Shahbuddin Ghori Brigade, to orchestrate destructive activities in south India.

Sattar was the brain behind the microchip-based timer devices used in several blasts across the country. In fact, several arrested Indian Mujahideen members have given information about the Ghori Brigade, a hitherto unknown south Indian module radicalised by perceived injustice to Muslims in India after the demolition of the Babri Masjid and the Gujarat riots, said the officials.

Explosives for the Bangalore blasts were prepared in Mohiddin’s house in Bommasandra here. When the plan was finalised, Sattar and the other accused brought ammonium nitrate, nuts, bolts, printed circuit boards and other materials from Kannur in Kerala and stashed them away in Mohiddin’s house, said the police officials.

Motives

They said the accused had three motives: to tarnish Bangalore’s iconic status acquired after the IT boom; its economic prosperity; and Karnataka being a BJP-ruled State. They were also involved in several other cases, including killing Hindu activists in Kerala, the officials said.

“We are looking for some more persons in connection with the serial blasts,” the police said.

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