By TwoCircles.net Staff Correspondent,
Bengaluru: Two more Keralites have been arrested and remanded to police custody till October 29 in connection with the 2008 Bengaluru serial blasts. Ibrahim Moulvi(48) and Umarul Farooq were arrested on Friday from Kasargode and Ajmer respectively. The arrested are also accused in the controversial Kerala-Kashmir terror case in which Keralites were recruited to the terrorist groups in Kashmir.
Both of them were produced before the Fist Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Venkatesh Hulagi on Saturday and remanded to police custody as the police asked for more time to interrogate them. Ibrahim Moulvi was arrested from Badiyadukka in Kasargode (in north Kerala). He was working there as the muazzin (one who calls Azan) in the Eriappadi Pallom Gunaje Juma Masjid in the fake name Muhammedali Musliyar from Panathur in Kasargode. Musliyar is 17th accused in the case. Umarul Farooq was arrested from the Nayabazaar area in Ajmer on Friday reportedly. Farooq is 16th accused in the Bengaluru blast case. He hails from Parappanangadi in Malappuram. Both are accused to have conspired with the prime accused Thadiyantavide Naseer. The chargesheet reportedly accuses that Farooq had held talks with PDP chairman Abdunnasir Maudany for the blasts. Farooq was earlier named second accused in the Kalamassery bus-burning case but was later dropped.
The police have reportedly got important information from the room in which Ibrahim Moulvi stayed in Kasargode. Moulvi is a native of Varampatta in Wayanad district in Kerala. He had worked in the fake name of Muhammedali Musliyar at Panathur in Kasargode. He has been staying in Kasargode since January 2009. However, there are also doubts as to why the state police could not find this person accused in a terrorism case, even though he was staying in a border district in the state.
A woman was killed and around 15 people were injured in the serial blasts that rocked Bengaluru city on July 25, 2008. Out of the 32 accused in the case, 19 persons have been arrested so far, among which 18 are Keralites. Four other Keralites accused in the case are said to have been killed in encounter with the police in Kashmir. Nine more are yet to be arrested.
Ibrahim Moulvi accused in Kerala-Kashmir terror case too
The NIA has been searching for the two in the Kerala-Kashmir terror case, the first terrorism case in Kerala to be taken up by the agency. Four Keralites were reported to have been killed in encounter with the police in Kashmir in November 2008. Investigation into the matter led the police to the first terrorism case in which young men from Kerala were recruited to the terror groups in Kashmir. A case was registered at the Edakkad Police Station in this regard on October 19, 2008 and DIG Vinod Kumar began investigation. A primary chargesheet was submitted in the Thalasseri Additional Sessions Court on January 21, 2009, naming 22 accused including the four killed in Kashmir. Ibrahim Moulvi was 11th accused and is described as the organizer of several spiritual classes which acted as a disguise to recruit Keralites to Kashmir. Later the case was handed over to the NIA and several accused were caught. Thadiyantavide Naseer, a main accused and the prime accused in the 2008 Bengaluru blast case, was caught from Bangladesh. So it was doubted that the other three to be caught, including Moulvi, would have left the country.
But reports suggest that Ibraheem Moulvi had already begun working as Muazzin in the mosque at Panathur in Kasargode when the look-out notice came out. There were also advertisements in the newspapers about his missing. But when even the NIA was searching for him, doubts are being raised as to how he was staying in masjid in Kerala itself without any outside help for nearly two years.
Meanwhile, the NIA last day argued in the NIA court in Kochi that those accused in the Kerala-Kashmir terror case should not be granted bail.
Though the controversial Kerala-Kashmir terror case, which was the first of the type in Kerala, came up by the reports on the encounter-killing of four Keralites in Kashmir, there has not yet been any official document proving the same. The families of the four dead had said that they did not want the dead bodies of the ‘terrorists’ back and so authorities had not taken any measures to bring them back to Kerala. Any pictures revealing the faces of the dead were not published anywhere. Nor were the relatives given any chance to recognize the dead. Autopsy reports of four unidentified persons were what could be collected till date on the regard. The death-certificates are also not available as the persons have not yet been officially identified. The NIA court had reportedly ordered the NIA to prove that the four accused in the case were killed in encounter, but the NIA has not yet been able to do the same. Fayaz and Fayiz of Kannur, Abdur Raheem of Parappanangadi and Varghese Joseph alias Muhammed Yaseen of Kochi are the four persons said to have been killed in the encounter.