Ajmer, October 17: State police forces and intelligence agencies have picked up two key suspects in the 2008 Bangalore bombings during operations in Ajmer, Rajasthan and Kasargod, Kerala.
Alleged bombmaker and Indian Mujahideen (IM) operative Ummer Farook, a key lieutenant of alleged Lashkar-e-Toiba operative Thadiyantavide Nazeer, was picked up near Ajmer railway station on Friday night and produced in a local court today. The Bangalore Police took him to Bangalore on transit remand.
The second man, Ibrahim Moulvi, a cleric closely associated with the IM’s founders Riyaz Shahbandari and Iqbal Shahbandari, was arrested in Kasargod, senior police officials in Bangalore said. Moulvi and Farook were among the five hitherto absconding suspects in the Bangalore blasts case.
Farook, who apparently belongs to Padinjarathara in Wayanad, Kerala, was involved in the operation to send five Kerala men for terrorist training to an LeT camp in Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (PoK) in the first week of October 2008. Four of these men were shot by security forces in Kupwara near the LoC.
Top government sources said Farook was living in Nala Bazaar near the Ajmer Sharif dargah since August 2009. He had been an active member of the Lashkar-IM affiliate Jam-I-yyathul Ansarul Muslimeen (JIAM) group that struck Bangalore on July 25, 2008. Nine bombs exploded in the city, killing a woman and injuring eight people.
Farook is wanted both in Kerala and Bangalore. He is considered to be close to Abdul Nasser Madani, the Kerala politician and leader of the People’s Democratic Party who was arrested in August 2010 for being part of the blasts conspiracy in Bangalore.
Moulvi, 48, is known for his inflammatory speeches, and has long been considered an integral part of the IM outfit that carried out a series of bombings around India between 2006 and 2008. Farook is alleged to have travelled to various parts of Bangalore to plant the bombs; Moulvi is accused of being privy to the conspiracy.
The arrests were a result of continuous monitoring across several states over the last two years, Bangalore Police Commissioner Shankar Bidari said.
———Agencies