BENGALURU: The city police on Saturday continued to grill the three terror suspects they arrested on Thursday.
Dr Syed Ismail Afaq, Saddam Hussain and Abdus Saboor, arrested for possessing explosives, have confessed to providing explosives for blasts in Hyderabad and Chennai, a police source said.
A homeopathic doctor, Afaq was a top leader of the terror outfit Indian Mujahideen and was recruiting young men for its operations, he claimed.
“These men may have connections with the February 2013 blast in Hyderabad’s Dilsukh Nagar, and the May 2014 twin blasts in Chennai. But we are yet to investigate their role in Church Street blast,” an investigator said.
Police suspect the explosives used in Hyderabad and Chennai were sent from Bhatkal. “These men were active in Indian Mujahideen, which was banned in 2010. They were trained to make improvised explosives, which they sent to Chennai and Hyderabad. Forensic experts are matching evidence from those cities with what we have seized from Bhatkal and Fraser Town,” the officer explained.
Kin Deny Charges
The three terror suspects from Bhatkal, who were arrested earlier this week, are innocent, their families claimed here on Saturday.
Bengaluru police said on Thursday that they had arrested two men from a flat in Fraser Town and a third from the coastal Karnataka town of Bhatkal. They also claimed they had seized a huge amount of explosive material from the suspects.
Parents of the arrested men spoke to the media at the Press Club in Bengaluru on Saturday and said the police had framed them.Syed Ismail Afaq, one of the three accused, is a doctor married to a Pakistani woman and was planning to start a homeopathic clinic in Bengaluru, his parents said.
On Thursday, the police had raided the house of Abdus Saboor in Bhatkal and claimed they had found explosives. But, the house had remained locked for two months and had nothing in it, Saboor’s parents claimed. Policemen in plain clothes entered the house with some packets and did not allow Saboor’s relatives near the house. The youths are innocent and locals in Bhatkal know them well, his parents said.