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Seventh accused arrested in Kushinagar mosque blast case
The UP Anti Terror Squad (ATS) on Saturday arrested the seventh accused, Salahudeen Ansari alias Munna, in connection with a mysterious blast at a Kushinagar mosque
The UP Anti Terror Squad (ATS) on Saturday arrested the seventh accused, Salahudeen Ansari alias Munna, in connection with a mysterious blast at a Kushinagar mosque on November 11, senior state police officials said.
They added that all the accused had so far denied their involvement in any nefarious activity but the probe hinted at a self-radicalised group operating at the local level.
A senior UP ATS official privy to the investigation said Munna had disappeared soon after the blast at the mosque in Turqapatti area of Kushinagar.
He said Munna was arrested from his friend’s place in Kushinagar where he was hiding for the past four days.
The official said Munna was interrogated and cross- questioned before the four other accused— imam of the mosque Maulana Azmuddin, resident of West Bengal, and Izhar, Ashiq Ansari and Javed Ansari.
He said the four accused, who were arrested on Wednesday, were in 48-hour police custody since 8am on Friday.
“However, the intent behind storing explosive material at the mosque was still not clear as none of the accused had accepted their involvement. Instead, they are shifting the blame on each other and making contradictory statements,” he said.
He said that the key accused Mohd Haji Qutubddin, 73, who is suspected to be mastermind behind the storage of explosives, was very old and fragile and so he could not be grilled rigorously.
“We are making a list of questions and trying to extract information from them by reasoning,” he added.
Other than the retired PWD employee, his grandson Mohd Ashfaq, who has worked in Army Medical Corps for around five years under short service commission, was arrested in the matter. Qutubuddin and Mohd Ashfaq were arrested after their names surfaced during the interrogation of the four others arrested earlier in the case. He also said Qutubuddin was arrested from the India-Nepal border in Kushinagar on Thursday morning while Ashfaq was taken into custody from his hideout in Hyderabad, Telangana, during Thursday-Friday night.
The accused had initially stated that an inverter battery had exploded, shattered the window panes and damaged the ceiling and walls of the mosque. However, nobody was injured in the blast. The police later discovered that Qutubuddin had brought explosives to the mosque in a sack and stored it there. The other accused knew about this, the police said.
