NIA grills Bangalore terror module suspect

A special team of National Investigation Agency (NIA) officials from Hyderabad questioned Dr Imran Ahmed, an accused in the Bangalore terror module case 2012, for long hours at an undisclosed location in the City on Saturday.

Ahmed alias Immu Bhai was arrested from a premises on Kanakapura Road on Thursday and remanded in police custody by a NIA special court. 

According to a senior official of the premier investigation agency, Ahmed, believed to be an active Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) operative, is involved in providing financial and logistic support to terror activities. 

His interrogation is expected to throw more light on the involvement of people from South India in the terror network.

The official said several individuals from South India, particularly Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, were flying to Saudi Arabia on the pretext of employment, but were working for LeT, trying to cobble up local modules to carry out terror attacks in the two states.

He said Farathullah Ghori, a native of Hyderabad and presently based out of Karachi, Pakistan and a wanted offender in the 2002 Gujarat Akshardham temple attack case, was also in touch with these operatives in Saudi, guiding them in carrying out jihadi activities. 

Shahid Bilal, wanted for Task Force office blast case of Hyderabad, his younger brother Abdul Majeed work for HuJI are based out of Riyadh. 

Abu Hamza, also from Hyderabad, allegedly works for LeT and is wanted for Sai Baba temple blast case of 2002 while Siddique Bin Osman is wanted in a terror case by Hyderabad police. “Interrogation of Dr Ahmed is expected to reveal a lot of intricate details of the terror infrastructure,” the senior official said. 

He added that in case they find sufficient evidence on involvement of these men in terror acts during the questioning of Ahmed, the agency could seek their extradition from Saudi.
 Meanwhile all-out attempts by Association for Protection of Civil Rights to track down the family of the arrested have yielded no results. 

Irshad Ahmed Desai of the Association said there was no information about his hometown and attempts to trace Ahmed’s friends or family have drawn a blank.DH News Service