Suspects may give leads on blasts

Two terror suspects held in the textile town of Davanagere and their associate could well provide crucial leads on the serial blasts in Hyderabad, reports BR Srikanth.

Two terror suspects held in the textile town of Davanagere and their associate, a medico in Hubli, could well provide crucial leads on the serial blasts in Hyderabad, the network of suave ISI-trained youths across the country and the attack on the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in December 2005.

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The suspects have confessed that they were awaiting a consignment of RDX from Pakistan and had planned to target an airport and other landmarks in north Karnataka. On Thursday, teams of the Intelligence Bureau (IB), Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the police from Gujarat, Goa, Hyderabad and Bangalore took turns to interrogate the duo of Riyazuddin Nasir alias Mohammed Ghouse, a college dropout trained in Pakistan, and Asadullah Abubaker, a student of ayurvedic medicine in Hubli. Nasir and Abubaker were arrested while trying to steal two motorbikes early this week.

A top police official told HT that Nasir was the son of Maulana Mohammed Nasseruddin, who was arrested in connection with the murder of Haren Pandya by the Gujarat Police in 2004. "So far, they have given us some leads about different cases. We will cross-check their statements again and use them as leads to crack the network," he said. The officer said these suspects will be brought to the state capital in a couple of days for narco-analysis and brain mapping at the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) here.

On their links with the attack on IISc, the officer said, "Nasir has told our team that he was introduced by one of his seniors (while being trained in Pakistan) to the man who opened fire at IISc and that the man told him how he planned and executed the attack all by himself. He has said the man worked for LeT and HuJI. We will take this information forward and quiz him during the narco tests here. But we are certain that he was not involved in that attack (on IIsc)," he said.

Nasir, a pre-university droput, slipped into Pakistan and has been trained to manufacture bombs, the officer said.