Terror suspect is a homoeopath; family say arrests were 'secret'

'Bhatkal house, where police 'found' explosives, was locked for 3 months'

Syed Ismail Afaq (34), one of the three terror suspects arrested by the Bengaluru police on Thursday, is a homeopathy doctor while four of his siblings are engineers. His parents, Syed Abdul Aleem (75) and Noorunnissa (62), have alleged that the police didn’t inform them about his arrest.

The parents have been living at a flat in Cox Town for the last eight months. Aleem ran a business in Bhatkal, Uttara Kannada district, before moving to Bengaluru, along with family, seven years ago. He owns a house in Bhatkal and visits the coastal town frequently. The couple have eight children: six sons and two daughters.

The family lived in Basavanagudi, RT Nagar and Fraser Town localities before renting the flat in Cox Town. They say Afaq didn’t run a clinic but would visit homes as a family doctor. A football player, he was the district president of Popular Front of India (PFI), a source in the family said. Afaq’s His wife is a Pakistani national.

 His younger brother owns a company and deals in mobile phone chargers. He lived in the same flat along with their youngest sister, who is a medical student. Abdus Subur, 24, another suspect arrested by the police, is the son of Noorunnissa’s sister.

He had come down to Bengaluru only on Wednesday, just a day before the arrest. He intended to inter with a company. Family sources said that Subur was studying final-semester MBA at Anjuman College in Bhatkal.

“Both of them (Afaq and Subur) left home at 10.45 am to attend an acupressure camp in Jayanagar and their mobile phones were found to be switched off around noon. We got to know about the arrests only after the police commissioner’s press conference.

We have educated our children and can’t digest the fact that our son has been arrested on charges of terrorism,” Noorunnissa said. According to her, she had grown suspicious when four policemen came to their flat around 2.30 pm and took away laptop and mobile phones.

The family said that Subur’s father had a kidney disease and his mother had accompanied him to Kozhikode, Kerala, for treatment. The family owns a house in Bhatkal but Subur stayed at a relative’s house since there was no one in his own house.

“Subur is the only son of his parents and the house in Bhatkal at Tengina Gundi Cross at Madina Colony had been locked for the last three months. The police have forced open the house and claimed to have seized explosive materials. The neighbours were not allowed to go near the locked house during the raid,” a relative said.

Afaq’s family claimed they didn’t know anything about the third suspect, Saddam Hussein, who was arrested in Bhatkal.

According to the police, Hussein is a scrap merchant and was picked up from Bhatkal by the Intelligence Bureau and the Central Crime Branch (CCB) police on Thursday.
DH News Service