By IANS
Hyderabad : A city court Thursday remanded some members of a Muslim women’s organisation to judicial custody for attacking a police station to protest a youth’s arrest for his alleged links with terrorists.
The women, arrested Wednesday night after the attack, were presented before a magistrate, who sent them to judicial custody for 14 days on charges of assaulting policemen and damaging government property.
A group of about 50 burkha-clad women members of the Darsgah Jihad-o-Shadat (DJS) attacked the Saidabad police station after the youth, Mohtesim Billa, was detained in connection with a four-year-old case. The women, who included some relatives of Billa, barged into the police station, attacked the officers and damaged furniture, windowpanes and equipment, the police said.
The women’s organization was also involved in the attack on the city police commissioner’s office four years ago, thepolice claimed..
Wednesday night’s attack on the police station and the arrests led to a new tension in the sensitive old city and security was stepped up.
Billa, a 21-year-old engineering student and son of cleric Moulana Abdul Aleem Islahi, was arrested for his alleged involvement in the attack on a Gujarat police team in 2004. He was also found in possession of seditious literature and CDs, the poli0e said.
Billa is the younger brother of Mujahid Saleem, who was killed in the firing by Gujarat police. The incident occurred in front of the Director General of Police (DGP) office here Oct 31, 2004, when followers of a cleric, Moulana Naseeruddin, resisted the Gujarat police’ efforts to take him to Gujarat.
Naseeruddin is currently lodged in a Gujarat jail and is facing trial in the murder of former Gujarat home minister Haren Pandya.
Billa’s arrest came hours after his friend and Naseeruddin’s son Raziuddin Nasir was brought here from Karnataka. Billa, arrested in the neighbouring state in January, was Wednesday sent to judicial custody till March 18.
Nasir, 22, a native of Saeedabad in the city, was brought on production warrant to probe his role into the bomb blasts in Hyderabad last year.
The police said Nasir was underground for three years. He is likely to be questioned for his suspected role in the bomb blasts and the conspiracy to blow up the DGP office.
May 18 last year, a bomb blast during Friday prayers at the historic Mecca Masjid killed nine people while near-simultaneous blasts Aug 25 at a park and an eatery claimed 44 lives.
Nasir was arrested in Davangere in Karnataka in January. Held in a motorcycle theft case, Nasir was subsequently identified as a Pakistan-trained terror operative and booked for conspiracy to wage war against the country and for his alleged association with the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI).
Nasir told interrogators in Karnataka that he with the support of two other youths from the city planned to crash a four-wheeler packed with explosives into the DGP office adjacent to the state legislative assembly building.
Meanwhile, Billa was also produced before a court Thursday and remanded to judicial custody for two weeks.