City police leave for TN to quiz terror suspects

 A special team of the City police has left for Tamil Nadu to interrogate three prime terror suspects – allegedly involved in the Malleswaram bomb blast – who were arrested by the Special Investigation Division over the past two days.

A senior officer who led the probe claimed that the Bangalore police were the first to expose the hitherto unknown terror module operating in the neighbouring state, which had been targeting Hindu rightwing leaders. He said the groundwork done by the City cops had led the Tamil Nadu police to the terrorists’ hideout.

A senior intelligence officer said the module had been elusive as its members were not at all using mobile phones. He said the entire manhunt was carried out based on human intelligence on the ground. There were reports that the module might be holed up in Bangalore near Hosur border, but a weeklong search yielded no results, he said.

‘Police’ Fakruddin, one of the prime suspects, was finally nabbed in Chennai on Friday. The officer said his movements were closely monitored after a tip by an informer.

There was also an intelligence alert that the module may target BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi’s rally in the city. His arrest later led to the arrest of Bilal Mallik and Panna Ismail at Puttur in Andhra Pradesh on Saturday.

The City police are preparing the draft of the charge sheet to be submitted in the court by this month-end. The maximum 180 days would come to an end on October 27 for the first three arrested suspects.

The City police, following the trail of the bike laden with explosives in the Malleswaram blast case, had on April 27 arrested Baasir alias Basheer, 30, Peer Mohiddeen alias Peer, 39, from a lodge in Chennai, and Kichan Buhari alias Bugari, 38, from Melapalayam, Tirunelveli district, Tamil Nadu.

Manhunt launched

Buhari, a former member of the defunct Al-Ummah terror outfit, had served a sentence for the 1998 Coimbatore serial bombings that had targeted BJP leader L K Advani. The City police had launched a manhunt for Panna Ismail, 38, of Melapalayam, Tirunelveli district, Police Fakruddin, 38, and Bilal Malik, 25, both from Nelpettai, Madurai, Tamil Nadu.

In an affidavit that the investigating officer H M Omkaraiah submitted to the High Court in May, the City police had identified Ismail as the bomber who parked the bike laden with explosives at Malleswaram on April 17. The affidavit also quotes Kichan Buhari as saying that he was incited by Ismail and Fakruddin to join jehadi activities.

He is also quoted as saying that he contributed Rs 50,000 towards a terror attack in Bangalore. The affidavit further says that the two men who bought the bike from a mechanic, Gopi, in Vellore have close resemblance to Police Fakruddin and Bilal Mallik.

This was followed by the high-profile assassinations of two Hindu leaders. S Vellaiyappan, 45, a Hindu Munnani leader, was hacked to death by a gang of about eight men when he was on his way to Ramakrishna Ashram in Vellore on July 1. Barely three weeks later on July 19, Ramesh, 52, a chartered accountant, and general secretary of BJP, Tamil Nadu, was murdered in front of his office in Salem.

The Tamil Nadu government formed a Special Investigation Division (SID) to probe the two murders. The SID also identified the three as the prime suspects in the two murders, too. Since then the City police and their Tamil Nadu counterparts had launched a joint manhunt for the three elusive suspects.