By IANS
Bangalore : The Karntaka police, which recently arrested seven terror-suspects, Monday said India’s IT hub Bangalore was safe and there was no perceived terror threat to the city.
The seven include Mohammed Asif, a final year medical student from Karnataka and Yahya Khan alias Kammukutty, a software engineer from Kerala.
All seven were held on suspicion of being actively involved with the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and links with terror groups.
However, Neelam Achutha Rao, Bangalore city police commissioner, told reporters: “The people arrested are just sympathisers and not campaigners of a jehadi movement.”
“The city is safe and there is no perceived terror threat to it,” he said.
The arrested men are being interrogated by Corps of Detectives (CoD) of the Karnataka police and four of them have been subjected to polygraphy, brain mapping and narco-analysis tests. The CoD has got a court’s permission to subject Yahya Khan to these tests.
Rao said some people were influenced by some jihadi literature, which they have been discussing with their friends.
“So far, there is no information about the suspects being indoctrinated into jihadi movement,” he added but declined to give details of the interrogation. “It is being looked into by the other wing – the Corps of Detectives. I cannot talk about it”.
The Karnataka police first arrested Asadullah Abubacker, a first year student of ayurvedic medicine, and Mohammed Ghouse alias RiyazuddinNasir, son of a cleric in Hyderabad, in second week of January from Honnali in Davangere district in central Karnataka.
Their interrogation led to the arrest of Asif, a final year student of Karnataka Institute of Medical Sciences in Hubli in northern Karnataka district of Dharwad.
The software engineer from Kerala was arrested in February from Guruppana Palya, a thickly populated area in Bangalore, on the basis of information provided by Asif.
Yahya Khan was reportedly sacked from GE Healthcare a few months back after found downloading office information, which he was not authorised to access.
Later Syed Sameer, an aluminium contractor, was also held from Guruppana Palya.
While there has been no official word on the information provided by the arrested during their interrogation, local media reports said some of them have confessed to planning strikes against well-known temples, IT companies, dams and airports.
The police have also searched a forest area on the border of Dharwad and Uttara Kannada districts for a hidden arms cache as Asif has reportedly confessed that terror-training camps were being organised there at the behest of the banned Lashkar-e-Toiba.
Officially there is no word from the police on whether they found any arms in the area.