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Court grants NIA 10-day custody of the accused
The duo were brought to the state capital from Kolkata on transit remand for their alleged role in the March 1 blast at Rameshwaram Cafe
Mussavir Hussain Shazib and Adbul Matheen Ahmed Taahaa, who are accused in the Rameshwaram Cafe blast case, was on Saturday remanded to the custody of the National Investigation Agency for 10 days after they were produced before a special court in Bengaluru.
The duo were brought to the state capital from Kolkata on transit remand for their alleged role in the March 1 blast at Rameshwaram Cafe. Shazib placed the crude bomb in the cafe, while Taahaa was the mastermind, the federal agency said. The bomb explosion injured nine people.
Taahaa (30) and Shazib (30) were tracked down in the early hours on Friday and arrested by the agency under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, or UAPA. Both are alleged to be associated with the Shivamogga module of the Islamic State, a terrorist organisation, and have been on the agency’s radar since 2020, said an official at the federal agency who didn’t want to be named.
Last month, the NIA announced a reward of ₹10 lakh each for those providing information leading to the arrest of these two accused. They are arrested after a 42 day cross-country, multi-agency manhunt.
In the course of the manhunt, the federal agency on March 29 released photographs of the two after scanning footage from hundreds of CCTVs in Bengaluru, Chennai and other cities. A cap left by Shazib at the cafe took them to a Chennai mall from where it was bought, investigators said.
Besides releasing their pictures, the NIA carried out searches at 18 locations in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh last month, and questioned several of their acquaintances and friends from their college and school days.
“In a significant development, the absconders in Rameswaram Cafe blast case, Adbul Matheen Taahaa and Mussavir Hussain Shazib, were traced out to their hideout near Kolkata and were apprehended by the NIA team,” an NIA spokesperson said in a statement on Friday. “Shazib is the accused who placed the IED (improvised explosive device) at the cafe and Taahaa is the mastermind behind the planning, execution of blast and subsequent evasion from the clutches of law.”
One of their associates, Muzammil Shareef, a resident of Chikkamagaluru, was arrested on March 27 for allegedly providing logistics support such as cellphones, fake SIM cards, etc., used to plan and execute the attack. Another member of the Shivamogga module, Maaz Muneer Ahmed, was taken into custody by the NIA from Bengaluru central prison in the second week of March and was interrogated in relation to the case.
Ahmed (25) was indoctrinated by another accused, Arafath Ali, on the instructions of Taahaa and Shabiz. Ahmed wrote graffiti in support of terror groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba at two places in Mangaluru in November 2020.
The same module was allegedly behind the November 19, 2022, pressure cooker blast in an auto-rickshaw. The bomb was meant for the Kadri Manjunatha temple in Mangaluru but the bomber in that case, Mohammad Shariq, was injured in the blast as the IED accidentally exploded on the way. Shariq was taken into custody.
