The CB-CID on Wednesday seized the pistol and ammunition belonging to one of the men alleged to be behind the Bangalore blasts.
A police team assisted by a CB-CID team from Coimbatore arrested Mohamed Ansar (38), a resident of Ukkadam, who the police claim, had in his possession pistol and ammunition belonging to Kichan Buhari, who was allegedly involved in the blasts in front of the BJP office at Malleswaram, Bangalore, in April.
From the arrest and subsequent confession, police have pieced together evidence on how Ansar came to possess the weapon and ammunition.
Police sources said that in July, they arrested one Mohamed Thasin with 142 detonators and 17 kilos of explosives in Tirunelveli. Thasin is said to have confessed to the CB-CID in Madurai that he had met Buhari at a prison in Bangalore on June 18.
During their meeting, Buhari had told Thasin that his automatic pistol of American make was with Mohamed Bashir (24) of Attupalam in Coimbatore.
According to a release issued by the CB-CID, Coimbatore, Buhari instructed him to take custody of the weapon from Bashir.
Thasin, who is now in the custody of the Madurai police, had then been brought to Coimbatore where he identified Bashir, who told police that he had handed over the weapon to Mohamed Ansar.
The police retrieved the pistol and ammunition from a drainage pipe close to Ansar’s home in Ukkadam, after he had passed on the weapon to his wife Yashida on coming to know that the police were on the lookout for him and the weapon.
His wife, with the help of her father Mohideen, had disposed of the weapon and ammunition after wrapping it in multiple layers of polythene, said a police source.
The CB-CID claimed in the release that after searching the pipe for close to 42 hours, they managed to retrieve the weapon and 7.65 mm bullets on Wednesday morning.