By IANS
Bangalore : Police are yet to find an Al Qaeda-link with the two doctors and an engineer from the city reportedly involved in last week's failed terror plots in London and Glasgow, police said Monday, after a senior minister declared there was "conclusive evidence" against one of them.
The city's police commissioner said police were investigating whether or not there was a link between the June 29- and 30-UK attacks and the December 2005 terror attack at the Indian Science Institute (IISc) in Bangalore.
Karnataka Home Minister M.P. Prakash told reporters Monday that the state police had given him "conclusive evidence" that Kafeel Ahmed, son of Bangalore-based doctors Maqbool and Zakia Ahmed, was the man who drove a blazing jeep into the Glasgow airport terminal building June 30.
But hours later, Police Commissioner N. Achuta Rao told reporters here that in the absence of information or request for inquiry from the British police so far, he was not in a position to confirm whether the alleged Glasgow bomber was indeed Kafeel Ahmed.
"There is no confirmation from the family about Kafeel's identity or his whereabouts. The British intelligence or the Scotland Yard has not contacted us so far," he said.
"In the wake of unconfirmed media reports about the alleged involvement of Kafeel, his doctor brother Sabeel Ahmed and their doctor cousin Mohammad Haneef in the terror strikes, we have set up teams to ascertain whether there are links between the terror suspects and India in general and Bangalore in particular.
"Our own investigations so far have not yielded anything substantial to share with the media. We will do so as and when we have something definite on the suspects, their terror links, if any, and to what extent they were involved in the failed blasts," he added.
Rao and Joint Police Commissioner (Law and Crime) Gopal Hosur refuted newspaper and television reports about Kafeel's reported involvement, saying media reports claiming to quote police sources were in fact based on sources other than those of the police or law enforcement agencies.
"Based on inputs from our sources and other sources, the anti-terrorist central crime branch in the last couple of days has taken up inquiries regarding the failed London and Glasgow blasts. In this connection, a number of persons, including the family members, relatives, friends and associates of Ahmed brothers and Haneef were examined to unearth details of the suspects' alleged involvement.
"As part of the investigations, we have recovered a hard disk of high capacity, a few CDs (compact discs) and some other materials from the Ahmeds' house in the southern suburb of the city. The hard disk and CDs, left behind by Kafeel before leaving for London in May, are being examined to ascertain their contents and find out whether there was any link between the recent UK blasts and the terror attack at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) here in December 2005," Rao said.
Besides questioning family members and relatives of the Ahmed brothers and Haneef, separate police teams have been set up to find out if there are any sleeper cells or modules operating in the city for terrorist outfits and their possible involvement in terror incidents in Mumbai, Malegaon, Delhi, Hyderabad and Jammu and Kashmir.
Asked whether any 'jihadi' literature was found from the Ahmeds' house or from the hard disc or CDs that can throw light on the failed blasts or the trio's alleged involvement, he said as the investigations were still continuing, he would not be able comment or reveal more than what he had already said about the unconfirmed reports in the media.
Earlier in the day, Minister M.P. Prakash said that Haneef, who has been detained by the Australian police, was a "misguided youth" who was involved indirectly in the UK plot.
With Bangalore, India's IT capital, coming under focus in the aftermath of the British terror plots, Prakash said the state's anti-terrorism cell and intelligence gathering would be overhauled and the cyber crime department strengthened.
Rao's department has submitted a proposal to the government pointing to the need to strengthen the anti-terrorist cell with trained personnel, equip them with modern gadgets and continuously upgrade their skills in view of the sophisticated methods used by terrorist networks.
The state government had promised to strengthen the intelligence network in December 2005 when the city witnessed its first major terror attack on the IISc. A retired professor of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi, who was attending a seminar there, was killed in the attack by a lone gunman.
But little has improved at the anti-terrorist cell since then, said senior Karnataka police officials who did not want to be named.
Overstaying foreigners is thought to a particularly weak area, with the media reporting that about 100 foreigners, especially Pakistanis, are overstaying in Karnataka. Police officials acknowledge the phenomenon but contest the number.
Police say it is very difficult to detect South Asians who overstay because of the similarity in physical appearance and the reluctance of locals to report such people to police.
Immigration controls are lax as well – there have been several cases in the past year of people flying out with fake passports or tampered visas.