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M’luru bomber wanted to establish IS province in south India: Police
According to the police, Mohammed Shariq, 24, hailing from Thirthahalli, is a terror accused charged with links to the IS and has been on the run since September 2022.
The suspect responsible for Saturday’s IED explosion in an auto in Mangaluru is wanted for his alleged links with the Islamic State (IS), police said on Sunday.
According to the police, Mohammed Shariq, 24, hailing from Thirthahalli, is a terror accused charged with links to the IS and has been on the run since September 2022.
An officer familiar with the matter said Shariq is said to be associated with Mateen Ahmed Taha, a member of the Al-Hind IS module, active in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
The module was busted by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in 2020 and charge sheets were filed in 2021, alleging that “the group wanted to establish an IS province in south India”. Police arrested Shariq in December 2020.
The arrest was the result of an investigation into graffiti on the walls of a building in the East police station limits and on a wall in the North police station limits. Police arrested Mohammed Shariq and Mazz Muneer Ahmed, aka, Mazz, who was then 21-year-old. An officer who probed the case said that Shariq and Mazz both hail from Thirthahalli and knew each other.
At that time, Shariq used to work as a salesperson at a cloth store owned by his father and “had made the plan to draw the graffiti o the wall”. “First they wrote on a dilapidated wall under the Mangaluru North police station limits, which they felt was never noticed by anybody. So, after a week they chose a more prominent location for the graffiti. They were arrested and later let off on bail,” said the officer, on anonymity.
It was two years later, in September Shariq’s name cropped up in another terror-related case. Shivamogga police on September 23 had said that two associates of a person arrested in connection with the stabbing incident during a clash over Hindutva ideologue Vinayak Damodar Savarkar’s poster in Shivamogga on August 15 have links to the Islamic State.
Addressing the media in September, the then Shivamogga superintendent of police (SP), BM Laxmi Prasad, had said initially four people were arrested by the Doddapete police in connection with the August 15 stabbing of one Prem Singh. Two communities had clashed over putting up the banners of Savarkar and 18th-century Mysuru ruler Tipu Sultan. There was a commotion over the banner, after which four men stabbed Singh, police said.
One of the four arrested men told police that Mazz, who was arrested along with Shariq in the graffiti case was an associate. When police took Mazz into custody, he told police that along with Shariq, he had conducted trial bomb blasts along the banks of Tungabhadra river.
“The accused had exploded the bomb made by them at a place locally known as Kemmangundi on the banks of the river in Shivamogga district and the experimental blast was successful,” the SP had said.
In a raid that followed police seized 14 mobiles, two laptops, remnants of the experimental bomb found at the site of the blast, materials required to make the bombs and a half-burnt Indian national flag. Explaining the findings of the investigation, Prasad said that in the days following Independence Day, the Indian national flag was burnt near the spot where the bomb blast took place and was video graphed on their mobile phones.
“The accused profess the ideology of Islamic State. They were of the view that India got Independence merely from the British. But the real independence would be achieved only after establishing a caliphate and enforcing Sharia law,” the officer had said.
“They were members of the channel that was only for one-way communication. So far, there is no information on a direct link with the banned organisation,” he said
Since this incident, Shariq was absconding. “We suspect that after Shivamogga police action, he went to Tamil Nadu, procured the material for the bomb, took accommodation in Mysuru using fake documents and made the bomb,” said a senior intelligence department official.
The officer added that on Saturday, Shariq had taken a bus to Mangaluru. “The location from where he boarded the auto is a bus stand. We suspect that the bomb accidentally exploded while he was on the way. What we gather is that since he used highly inflammable material to make the IED and kept it inside a pressure cooker, it exploded due to friction. Forensics will be able to verify it in the coming days,” he added.
