By IANS,
Ahmedabad : Nine activists of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) arrested by the Gujarat police in connection with the July 26 Ahmedabad bombings were Sunday sent to 14-day police remand.
The nine were presented before the metropolitan magistrate, who remanded them in police custody of 14 days, the maximum allowed for the police under the law.
The 10th arrested man, Mufti Abu Bashr, who is said to the mastermind behind the conspiracy, was brought from Uttar Pradesh to Ahmedabad on a three-day transit remand but he was yet to be produced before a court.
The police sought their custody on three grounds: for more arrests to be made, possible chances of a larger conspiracy to have been hatched, and for further interrogations.
Asim Qureshi, lawyer for the nine accused, submitted to Magistrate J.K. Pandya that there was no need for further police custody as these people were in the police custody for a long time. He said he would approach a higher court in this regard.
The nine people sent to the Gaekwad Haveli police station here are: Sajid Mansuri of Surat who bought cycles with which explosives were strapped; Zahid Sheikh, a resident of Juhapura here who bought gas cylinders and facilitated use of car-laden explosives; Yunus Ansari of Bapunagar area here who was said to be a confidant of Mufti Bashr; Samsuddin Sheikh of Surat who procured nitrates for making explosives; Arif Kagzi of Juhapura here who set up sleeper cells; Gyasuddin Sheikh who prepared low-intensity bombs; and Usman Agarbattiwala, Imran and Iqbal Sheikh of Vadodara.
As many as 22 bombs went off in a span of little over an hour on the evening of July 26, killing 55 people here.