Patna blasts: Mangalore woman held for funding IM

Mangalore, Nov 13: In a crucial breakthrough in

blasts probe, the Bihar Police, with help of their Karnataka counterparts, on Tuesday held a woman in Mangalore who is suspected to have provided financial assistance to

(IM) through hawala transactions.

According to a Deccan Herald report, the woman, Ayesha Bano, a mother of three, was taken to a local court, which allowed the four-member team from Bihar to take her on transit remand. She will be brought to Patna on Wednesday.

Probes revealed that Ayesha was managing 50 accounts in Bihar through net-banking and real-time gross settlement.

Earlier, the police had arrested four persons in Lakhisaria. This led the police to Ayesha. It was found that Gopal, Vikas, Pawan and Ganesh got their funds through hawala transactions. They are being questioned about their links with the Pakistan-based Inter Services Intelligence.

The team later found that a person identified as Ibrahim from Pakistan was issuing instructions, while Ayesha managed the bank accounts.

Ayesha, who was reportedly abandoned by her husband, is charged with transferring over Rs 1 crore through different transactions worth Rs 49,000 or less. The amount was sent from abroad or other locations in the country to accounts of different people.

The four men arrested in Lakhisarai used to help economically backward people in opening bank accounts, but retained the ATM cards. "The police have recovered 20 ATM cards and 35 passbooks from them," said Lakhisarai Superintendent of Police Rajeev Mishra.

"They used to get 10 to 20 per cent commission for each hawala transactions," investigator said.

Oneindia News

(With agency inputs)