MUMBAI: A local court today extended till February 18 the police custody of two alleged operatives of Indian Mujahideen, arrested for one of the three bomb blasts that rocked the metropolis on July 13 last year.
Two other suspects were taken into custody for another blast the same day.
In a related development, arrested accused Haroon Naik pleaded innocence to charges in Zaveri Bazaar blast case when he was produced before Metropolitan Magistrate's Court in Mazgaon at the end of his police custody.
Near-simultaneous bomb blasts at Zaveri Bazaar, Opera House and Dadar had killed 27 persons.
Naik is suspected to have used hawala channels to fund the blasts with the help of another arrested accused and hawala operator Kanwar Nain Wazeer Chand Patrija (42). Patrija handed over Rs 10 lakh to fugitive IM's top operative Yasin Bhatkal to execute the terror attack, police had said.
Naik, who was already behind bars in a fake currency case, was taken into custody in the blast case on February 1.
Patrija, who hails from Ghaziabad, was arrested from Delhi on January 30.
As the custody of the two apprehended in the Zaveri Bazaar case got over today, they were produced before the court which extended their remand till February 18.
During the court proceedings, Naik sought to know in which terror case he had been nabbed, to which the Magistrate replied, the Zaveri Bazaar case.
"I am not linked to this case," Naik told the court, pleading his innocence.
Meanwhile, two other arrested accused Naqi Ahmed Wasi Ahmed Sheikh (22) and Nadeem Akhtar Ashfaq Sheikh (23), originally from Bihar's Darbhanga district, were produced before the court which sent them in judicial custody till February 24 in the Zaveri Bazaar blast case. The two had been apprehended on January 23.
Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) subsequently sought their custody in the Opera House blast. Accepting their plea, the court sent them to ATS custody till February 17.
The first explosion rocked Zaveri Bazar, a bustling jewellery market, at 6.50 pm and a minute later another blast shook the busy business area of Opera House. The third blast ripped through the crowded Dadar area in central Mumbai at 7.04 pm.
The ATS had registered three terror cases in different police stations of the city.