JOIN USAlmost a week after the twin blasts at Dilsukhnagar that claimed the lives of 16 people and injured more than 100, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has on Friday quizzed two suspected Indian Mujahideen operatives at their office here in Begumpet.
However, no arrests were made so far by any agency in the case.
Syed Maqbool and Imran Khan, currently lodged in Tihar Jail following their arrest by Delhi Police in connection with the 2012 Pune blasts, were brought to Hyderabad after a Delhi court on Thursday granted five-day custody of the two men for interrogation. Maqbool and Imran allegedly recced the Dilsukhnagar area ahead of the attack. The NIA sleuths also summoned police officers from the Malakpet and LB Nagar police stations to be present during certain sections of the questioning.
According to the NIA, the blasts took place on the alleged instructions of IM's Pakistan-based founder Riyaz Bhatkal and interrogation on Friday will help in unearthing plot. The blasts were triggered by the IEDs planted near Konark and Venkatadiri theatres in Dilsukhnagar in two bi-cycles built from scrap.
Incidentally Syed Maqbool was arrested and convicted in a case in Hyderabad and was given amnesty during the regime of YSR on the plea of the Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul Musclemen (MIM) leaders including Asaduddin Owaisi, now an MP.
The Andhra Pradesh government had granted remission to Syed Maqbool in an earlier murder case, a former member of the MIM, Maqbool was convicted of murdering one Krishnamurthy in Nizamabad district in 1999 and sentenced to life imprisonment in October 2004.
But following a grant of remission by then YSR government in 2009, Maqbool walked free.
He then became a member of an MIM unit of Nanded, Maharashtra, and was conveniently expelled by MIM in 2012 on the ground for “non-performance” - or failure to increase membership. Maqbool, originally of Shaheen Nagar in Old City here, remained free for three years