KOZHIKODE: The NIA trial court, which sentenced Thadiyantevida Nazeer and Shafaz in the 2006 Kozhikode twin blast case, had said that the blast was carried out in protest against the denial of bail to the accused in the second Marad case. The court in its order in August 2011 had further observed that the blast was in protest against the state government and the accused had actually planned a larger one.
The second Marad incident happened in 2003 at the beach which had witnessed the killings of eight Hindus by Islamic fundamentalists, besides one attacker who was accidentally hit and killed. It was on March 3, 2006 the twin blasts rocked two places in Kozhikode city, within a gap of 20 minutes. The first happened at 12.45pm in an isolated corner of the KSRTC bus stand at Mavoor Road.
While the police were carrying out search in the area, another bomb went off around 500 metres away, at the Mofussil bus stand. About half an hour earlier, an anonymous call was received at the district collectorate and in the office of ‘Calicut Times’ that a bomb would be exploded and it was an after effect of Marad.
Timer devices were used for the blasts. Initially, the case was probed by the local police and later it was handed over to the crime branch. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) came to the scene in 2009. But many persons believed that the blasts at isolated spots were Thadiyantevida Nazeer’s attempt to prove a point to the Islamic terrorist groups that he was capable of carrying out terrifying strikes in the heart of the city.