Tamil Nadu police recoveries bare Coimbatore bomber-Jihadist links

Coimbatore blast accused Jameesha Mubin was questioned by the NIA in 2018 over his alleged terror links. He is said to have links to Islamic State module head Mohammad Azharuddin who was in touch with 2019 Sri Lankan bombing mastermind. The case has now been taken over by NIA.

Updated on: Oct 29, 2022, 14:08:36 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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The National Investigation Agency will build on Tamil Nadu police's investigations into an Islamic jihadist role in the October 23 blast in front of Sangameshwarar Temple at Ukkadam in Coimbatore.

Security personnel at the site after an LPG cylinder exploded inside a car in Coimbatore. (PTI)

In its First Information Report (FIR) based on Tamil Nadu Police investigations and recoveries, the agency detailed the proceeds of the searches carried out at the premises of 29-year-old radical Islamist Jameesha Mubin, who was driving the Maruti car which caught fire after explosion, leading to his death.

The Tamil Nadu Police investigations showed that Mubin was the owner of the car used in the blast ahead of Diwali.

According to Tamil Nadu Police, 109 incriminating materials were seized. The recovered materials included potassium nitrate, black powder, match box, two-metre long cracker fuse, nitro-glycerin, red phosphorus, PETN powder, aluminium powder, wire, iron nails, switch, Indane gas cylinder, gas regulator, insulation tape, packing tape, hand gloves and others. The agency has also seized notebooks with details of Islamic ideology and details about jihad.

The Centre is of the opinion that scheduled offence under NIA Act, 2008 has been committed with the act having national and international ramifications. The agency had registered an FIR on October 27 and has so far arrested six suspects in the case.

Mubin was questioned by the NIA in 2018 over the alleged terror links, and was said to be in touch with ISIS module head Mohammad Azharuddin in Coimbatore, who is currently in jail. Based on the investigations, the Indian intelligence agencies had sent three alerts to Sri Lanka about possible terror strikes in the island nation.

After the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings there, the NIA during investigations had learnt that Azharuddin and his associate Sheikh Hidayatullah were in touch with Sri Lankan bombing mastermind Maulvi Zahran bin Hashim and were planning similar strikes in Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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