Wanted ultra in AP police custody

Mohammed Amjad alias Khwaja, who is wanted in at least three terror attacks in Hyderabad, is said to be the successor to Shahid Bilal, a self-styled commander of HuJI, who was reported by the Pakistani police to have been killed in Karachi in 2007. Both men belong to Hyderabad.

Presenting him to the media here on Monday, City Police Commissioner B Prasada Rao said the much-wanted Khwaja had a a red-corner notice issued against him.

He was wanted in connection with suicide blast at a police task force office at Begumpet in October 2005, the two blasts of 2007 and also for conspiring to kill senior the state’s Bharatiya Janata Party leader Indrasen Reddy in 2004.

Khwaja was arrested in Chennai a few days ago in a joint operation by the Intelligence Bureau and the Tamil Nadu police, and was later flown to Hyderabad for further questioning.

Khwaja, a resident of Moosaram Bagh in Hyderabad, had links with the Bangladesh-based HuJI and a few other Pakistan-based terror outfits, said the police. Police believe Khwaja could also throw light on the “mystery” of the so-called death of Bilal.They believe Khwaja and Bilal, who were close friends living in the same locality, had been recruited and trained in Bangladesh between 2002 and 2004.

The police produced Khwaja at the press conference a day after his mother Lateefa Begum demanded the police to produce him in a court fearing he could be eliminated in an encounter. Lateefa has denied the police allegations against Khwaja.