By IANS,
New Delhi : A city court Thursday extended by five days the police custody of two alleged members of the Indian Mujahideen outfit who are accused of sending terror e-mails to the media before the serial bombings in the country last year.
Salman Kadar Shaikh and Asif Bashir Sheikh were taken to the court of Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Kaveri Baweja, who extended their police custody.
Shaikh alias Mobin was accused of sending threatening e-mails to media organisations prior to the July 26 Ahmedabad and Sep 13 Delhi serial blasts from unsecured wireless Internet connections in Navi Mumbai and Mumbai respectively.
Another e-mail was sent from a wireless Internet connection in a college in central Mumbai. The Sep 13 bombings left 26 people dead while around 55 people were killed in the Ahmedabad bombings.
Mobin, who worked as a senior technical adviser in an IT firm, is part of the Indian Mujahideen’s media cell and was arrested along with Mohammed Mansoor Asghar Peerbhoy and Asif Bashruddin Sheikh.
Mobin pleaded before the court that he may be allowed to take his books inside the jail as he wants to prepare for his examinations for Pune University that are scheduled to take place March 25 and April 2.
To this, the court said that since investigations are in the initial stage permission cannot be granted, but kept his plea pending for consideration.
The other IM media member Asif Bashir Sheikh, who translated the e-mails from Urdu to English,, was also sent to police custody. The mails, which claimed responsibility for the serial bombings in Ahmedabad and Delhi, were forwarded to the media houses by his accomplice Peerbhoy.
Bashir Sheikh, a mechanical engineer, was brought to the city court from Aurangabad in Maharashtra on a transit remand by Delhi Police. He was working in a private firm when he came in contact with Riyaz and Iqbal Bhatkal in Pune while he was learning Urdu.
The Bhatkal brothers allegedly motivated Sheikh to join the Indian Mujahideen.
The police allege that Sheikh, arrested from Pune on Sep 28 last year, later instigated Peerbhoy to join the terror outfit.