Monday, November 29, 1999

Phone call nailed IM role in Pune blast

News posted by www.newsinfoline.com

Investigators probing Pune's German Bakery blast have got compelling information to confirm that the attack was the handiwork of the Indian Mujahideen, sources told The Sunday Express, days after Union Home Minister P Chidambaram told Parliament that the case had been cracked.The breakthrough, the sources said, is based on a telephone call IM co-founder Riyaz Bhatkal is believed to have made to a young IM operative who was in Nepal on the day of the blast on February 13, claiming credit and exchanging congratulations for the attack.The operative, Salman alias Chotu, was arrested weeks after the blast and is said to be singing about the IM hand in the blast during his interrogation by security agencies from across the country while in custody in Delhi."During interrogation, he told us that on February 13, shortly after the Pune blast, he received a call from Riyaz Bhatlal on the Thuraya phone he was using there," a source said. "Riyaz immediately congratulated him. When Salman asked him what the congratulations were for, Riyaz told him to switch on the TV to see the outfit's latest work. This has helped us narrow down the Pune probe to one outfit and its members."Salman belongs to Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh and spent several years of his childhood in Mumbai's western suburb of Nirmal Nagar, studying up to class eight in a municipal school opposite the Bandra Metropolitan Magistrates Court. According to the UP Police, Salman was enrolled in the Bachelor of Computer Applications (BCA) course in the Lucknow campus of Sikkim Manipal University in 2008.Alleged to be a teenage bomber, Salman is accused of involvement in the serial bomb blasts in Gorakhpur in May 2007, the simultaneous blasts outside civil courts in Varanasi, Lucknow and Faizabad in November 2007, the May 2008 bomb blasts in Jaipur, the serial blasts in Ahmedabad in July 2008, as well as the serial blasts in Delhi in September 2008."Following the Batla House encounter, Salman fled the city along with Dr. Shahnawaz, the brother of Mohammad Saif who was arrested after the encounter," an officer said. "For almost a year after that, he stayed in a small room in his native village Sanjarpur in Azamgarh district. There was a reward of Rs 1 lakh on his head announced by the Delhi police. He then slipped into Nepal via Basti and Siddhartnagar."On February 28, Salman crossed over into India and was arrested from Siddhartnagar distict in UP by the state's Anti-Terrorism Squad on March 6. Following his arrest, the Delhi Police secured a transit remand for his custody, and he has been behind bars in the Capital since.Interrogators are said to have found that Salman used a bogus Nepali passport which was in the name of Mohammad Fahad Ansari. While he was actually born in October 1992, the year of birth on this passport was 1985. From Nepal, he is believed to have flown to Sharjah and then on to Pakistan on December 12, 2009.In Pakistan, Salman met top IM leader Ameer Raza Khan, who told him to attend terror training camps again in preparation for future strikes. After completing this terror training, Salman once again slipped into Nepal on January 16, the sources said.

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