Terror catch: Step closer to Bhatkal

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In a move that has upset Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, Karnataka police’s Central Crime Branch sleuths tracked down and arrested a key Indian Mujahideen operative in Bihar’s Darbhanga district on Sunday. Mr Kumar has slammed the move describing it as “a brazen violation of established law.”

City Police Commissioner Jyothi Prakash Mirji told reporters here on Tuesday however that the arrest was to pre-empt any move by his supporters to thwart the police action. The police said the arrest of the alleged terror suspect Mohammed Kafeel Akhtar at Darbhanga, Bihar, was also a bid to get to Yasin Bhatkal, the elusive chief operative of the terror group, in hiding since the April 2010 Chinnaswamy Stadium blast that injured 15 people. Bhatkal, police said is the alleged mastermind behind the stadium blasts.

Police sources indicated that Kafeel and Bhatkal had been close, and that it was Kafeel who had handed over the telephone and a SIM card to Bhatkal when he did the recce of the stadium, prior to the blast. Interrogation of others with links to IM revealed the close relationship between the shadowy IM leader and the Bihar operative. “Nabbing Kafeel will help us get one step closer to Bhatkal,” an officer said. State police also arrested Syed Abdul Rehman alias Abdul Rehman (25) suspected to belong to the banned militant outfit Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, Mr Mirji said.

Kafeel was produced before a local court in Ranchi (Jharkhand). In police custody for questioning, he will be flown in to Bengaluru on Wednesday. Kafeel becomes the seventh person to be arrested in relation to the cricket stadium bomb blast.

Kafeel, a teacher in Al Ajari school in Darbhanga was preaching Jihad to young Muslims, Mirji alleged. He along with Yasin Bhatkal and other IM operatives Riyaz Bhatkal, Iqbal Bhatkal and Mohsin Choudhary and six others had hatched a conspiracy to carry out bomb blasts in important places in India including at Chinnaswamy stadium.