The Maharashtra ATS on Wednesday claimed that the hawala money used for the 13/7 serial blasts case in the city was routed through the UAE.
"The hawala money utilised to engineer the triple blasts was routed through UAE. We have all the details as to how the money was channelised via UAE and who sponsored it," an ATS official said on condition of anonymity.
On Monday, the state ATS had claimed a breakthrough in the probe with the arrest of two suspected Indian Mujahideen (IM) operatives Naqi Ahmed Wasi Ahmed Sheikh and Nadeem Akhtar Ashfaq Sheikh, originally from Bihar's Darbhanga district. Investigators also claimed that with the arrest of Haroon Rashid Naik, currently in jail in a fake currency case, they stumbled upon the money trail in the blasts and zeroed in on IM as the perpetrators.
Meanwhile, talking about the recovery of two Unicorn make motorcycles, allegedly stolen by Naqi and Nadeem from Dongri and VP Road areas here last August and October for future use, state ATS chief Rakesh Maria said the two vehicles were transported to Bihar by a train using fake documents. During the probe, ATS had confiscated the two motorcycles from Bihar, while the vehicles were being used by the relatives of Naqi and Ahmed.
"Naqi and Ahmed had already possessed two Unicorn motorcycles, which they used for a few weeks before selling them off in Mumbai.
However, the two had kept the photocopies of these vehicles' documents after selling them," Maria said.
"The plate numbers of these two stolen motorcycles were replaced by the numbers of those vehicles which they had bought and sold. Then they submitted photocopies of their previously owned vehicles to the railway authorities at the time of verification, while transporting the stolen vehicles to Bihar," he added.
Meanwhile, one more person has been arrested in a SIM card racket case, taking the total number of arrests in the case to nine. Shivkumar Mensirou (23), a car driver by profession, was arrested from the city yesterday and remanded in police custody till February 2, police said.
Around 2,200 mobile connection applications and over 10,000 photocopies of these documents were recovered from him, they said.
Naqi and Nadeem were among the eight persons arrested in the SIM card racket case before being nailed in the blasts case, police said.
Maria said Mensirou used to take original documents from various people introducing them to a new scheme where the customer would get a SIM card for merely Rs 30 with a talktime worth Rs 40.
"After collecting the original documents, the accused provided the SIM cards to the customers. He then took out 10 to 15 photocopies of each original document," he added.
Then he used to hand over these photocopies to the agents of various telecom companies for which he would be paid Rs three per copy, he added.
On these bogus documents companies provide mobile connections, Maria said, adding that some of these SIM cards procured fraudulently were used by the perpetrators of last year's serial blasts in Mumbai that claimed 27 lives.
"The telecom companies' agents have also under scanner in this SIM cards racket case," Maria said.