By Mohammed Siddique, TwoCircles.net,
Hyderabad: OCTOPUS, the anti terrorist force of Andhra Pradesh Police has filed a voluminous charge sheet in the case of bomb blast at Gokul Chat Bhandar in the Nampally criminal court on Saturday.
33 people were killed in the crowded eatery in Kothi area of Hyderabad on the evening of August 25, 2007. This is the third charge sheet against seven accused in this case. The Octopus had earlier filed two separate charge sheets in another blast at Lumbini Park Laserium and an unexploded bomb recovered at a crowded place in Dilsukhnagar on the same day about two years ago.
In the latest charge sheet spread on 1125 pages, the same seven persons have been named as accused that were named in the earlier two charge sheets. All seven of them are non locals and four of them who were arrested by Mumbai police last year are now lodged in Cherlapally Central Jail of Hyderabad. The charge sheet has shown 286 people as witnesses in the Gokul Chat case.
The seven persons named in the charge sheet include Mohd Akbar Ismail Chowdhary alias Sayeed, Anique Shafeeq Sayeed alias Anique, Riyaz Bhatkal alias Roshan Khan, Iqbal Bhatkal alias Mohammaed Bhai, Farooq Sharfuddin Tarkash alias Abdullah, Mohd Sadiq Ansar Ahmed Shaik alias Yaseer and Amir Reza Khan alias Muttaki.
Akbar Ismail Chowdhary, Aneeq Shafeeq and Ansar Ahmad Shaikh were arrested by Mumbai police in October 2008 and they were brought to Hyderabad in February 2009. The Mumbai police, which had arrested the three persons in connection with some other terror incidents, learnt about their involvement in the Hyderabad blasts in course of interrogation and informed the Hyderabad police about it. They confessed their involvement in the twin blast saying they carried it out to take revenge for the blast at Mecca Masjid on May 18, 2007 by “Hindu militants”.
According to the charge sheet Riyaz Bhatkal alias Roshan Khan was the main brain behind the conspiracy and the blasts and he continues to be at large along with two other accused.
With the filing of the charge sheet, the way is cleared now for the trial of the accused in the cases of blasts at Lumbini Park and Gokul Chat as well as the unexploded bomb.
According to the police it was Riyaz Bhatkal who planted the bomb at Gokul Chat while Aneeq Shafeeq planted the bomb at Lumbini Park. The third bomb at Dilsukhnagar bridge was placed by Akbar Chowdhary but it did not explode.
It may be recalled here that after the blasts in Mecca Masjid as well as the twin blasts, the Hyderabad city police had picked up hundred local youth, 27 of them were subjected to third degree torture to force them to confess their involvement in the blasts. Later they were booked in different cases including criminal conspiracy cases but the local courts subsequently acquitted them.
The persons arrested in Mumbai told the police that no local person from Hyderabad was involved in the blasts.