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MUMBAI: Suspected Indian Mujahideen operative Waqas Saad Shaikh, who was arrested by the Delhi Police's special cell in Jaipur on Saturday, had stayed for three days at a lodge in Bandra (West) before leaving for Rajasthan. The Delhi Police has been reluctant to speak about why the terror suspect was in Mumbai.
Sources in the Delhi Police's special cell said that before coming to Mumbai, Waqas had been hiding in a safe house in Kerala for some time. "He took a train from Kerala to Mumbai, planning to go to Ajmer. We are interrogating him," said special cell commissioner SM Srivastava.
In the past, the cell arrested several terror suspects who were initially named as wanted by the Maharashtra Police. The suspects include Zabihuddin Ansari, alias Abu Jundal, the handler of the 26/11 terrorists, and 13/7 bomb planters and IM operatives Yasin Bhatkal and Asadullah Akhtar, alias Tabrez.
Was Waqas planning to help Bhatkal escape from police custody in Mumbai? Srivastava said, "Till now, it has not come up in the interrogation." The special cell is likely to give Maharashtra's anti-terrorism squad (ATS) the address of the Bandra lodge where Waqas stayed so that witnesses' statements can be recorded.
Meanwhile, ATS chief Himanshu Roy has said that the squad will get a warrant from a Mumbai court to get Waqas's custody for the July 2011 triple blasts, in which 27 people were killed. Bhatkal and Tabrez are in ATS custody. The three, before and after the 13/7 blasts, stayed at Habib Mansion in Byculla. They rented a room on the third floor of the building for Rs 8,000 and made IEDs.
Sources in the security establishment said Waqas's facial and physical similarity with absconding IM operative Aariz Junaid Khan had delayed his arrest. "The police wanted to be sure before picking up Waqas and so they used technology to verify the suspect as Waqas," said a source. {Was therer a political connection here for Junaid Khan which forced the police to be usre its Waqas and not the other terrorist?}
Khan, an Azamgarh resident, and several IM operatives were named in an FIR filed by the National Investigation Agency in June 2012. The same year, Khan's photograph was identified as Waqas's by a witnesses in Darbhanga, where Waqas had spent some time. "The confusion may have been due to their similar looks. This was one of the reasons the initial poster, issued by the NIA, on 12 wanted IM operatives did not carry Waqas's photograph," a source said.
Patna: Fifteen months after the October 27, 2013 bomb explosions during Narendra Modi's Hunkar Rally in the state capital, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) Special Court in Patna on Tuesday filed charges against the ten Indian Mujahideen and Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) operatives responsible for one of the worst terror attacks in the city's long history.
NIA special judge Anil Kumar Singh ordered filing of charges against Omar Siddiqui and Azharuddin Qureshi from Chhattisgarh, Ahmad Hussain and Fakhruddin of Mirzapur in Uttar Pradesh, and Haidar Ali, Numan Ansari, Mohammed Mujibullah Ansari, Mohammed Firoz Aslam, Mohammed Ifteqaar Alam and an unnamed juvenile - all from Ranchi in Jharkhand state.
The charges against the ten were filed under various sections including 120(B), 153A, 307, 324, 436, 458 and 34 of the Indian Penal Code; Sections 3 and 4 of Explosive Substances Act and sections 16, 17, 18, 18A, 18B, 20 and 23 of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act of 1967.
Six persons had died in the explosion and over 80 received serious injuries.
The prosecution will produce the first witness on January 19.
Bangalore blast probe: Two SIMI men in city police custody
As part of its investigations into the December 28 bomb blast at Bangalore’s Church Street which killed a woman, the Bangalore Police on Friday took custody of two SIMI men – Haidar Ali alias Black Beauty, 28, and Umed Siddiqui, 37 who are the prime accused in the October 27, 2013 bomb attacks at a Narendra Modi political rally in Patna.
Police are looking at the duo for information since investigations have revealed similarities between the Improvised Explosive Device used for the Church Street blast and the IEDs used by SIMI modules lead by Ali and Siddiqui to carry out the blasts at Modi’s Patna rally in 2013. The duo were brought on a transit warrant from Patna and were produced in a special terrorism court on Friday by the Bangalore police. The police told the court that Ali and Siddiqui were not being accused in the Church Street case but they needed to be questioned. The court handed over the duo to the Bangalore police for custody until March 7. Share This Article Related Article NIA takes over probe into ’14 blast in Bengaluru Court rejects Bangalore cops plea to examine evidence from Patna blasts Bangalore bomb markings same as those in Patna IED pipes: police Bangalore blast: First major lead as CCTV footage reveals ‘man in black’ Bangalore bomb similar to those used in Chennai, Roorkee, Pune NIA to seek custody of SIMI man arrested in Raipur
Ali has been identified by the NIA as a leader of the SIMI in Ranchi, who also had connections with members of the Indian Mujahideen, while Siddiqui was allegedly the leader of the Raipur SIMI unit. Police investigations in the Bangalore Church Street case has so far found matches between the pipe used to create the elbow bomb for the Bangalore blast and the elbow pipes used for the Patna attack. Forensic reports on the basis of post explosion analysis of chemical residues has also revealed the use of a very similar mix of explosives in the blasts at Patna and Bangalore. A report of the CFSL, Kolkata in the Patna blast has revealed “the presence of post explosion residues of Ammonium nitrate, Aluminium, Potassium Chlorate” which is the same as the post explosion residues found in the Church Street blast case. Investigations by the NIA into the Patna blasts has revealed that the pipes used for the bombs were bought by Haidar Ali. In preliminary questioning Ali has told the Bangalore police that he was the only one using the GI elbow pipes (2.5 inches in diameter and a 5 mm thickness) to make bombs. The Bangalore police will question Ali and Siddiqui regarding the number of pipes they bought ahead of the Patna blasts, who else had access to these pipes and regarding missing associates who may be behind the Church Street attack on December 28, 2014. The Bangalore police had last month sourced copies of reports of the Central Forensic Science Laboratory, Kolkata on the IEDs used in the Patna blast as well as copies of interrogations and chargesheets in the Patna case as part of their investigations. According to a NIA chargesheet in the investigations against Haidar Ali and his men, a laptop that was seized from the group contained details of making elbow bombs as outlined in Al Qaeda’s online magazine Inspire. “A seized laptop contained a file of ‘Inspire Magazine’, wherein the entire process of making the elbow bomb has been descriptively laid down,” the NIA has stated. While the role of five fugitive members of the Madhya Pradesh unit of the SIMI, who escaped from a prison in Khandwa last year, was initially suspected in the Church Street blast case, police are now expanding their investigations to look at underground members of the Jharkhand and Chattisgarah unit of the SIMI who may have played a role in the blast. -
Its sad that we didn't link this article in this thread till now.
