Hyderabad police arrive in Kolkata for mosque blast probe

Kolkata, May 23 (UNI) Tracking down the root of the Mecca mosque blast, a team of Hyderabad police has arrived in the city to exchange information with the state CID officials.

The team is expected to take the help of the state police for probing the link between Mohammad Shahid alias Bilal, a suspect in the May 18 explosion and Sheikh Sameer, the prime accused in last year's Mumbai train blast.

''A team of Hyderabad police has come to the city in connection with the Hyderabad blast,'' Home Secretary Prasad Ranjan Roy confirmed.

Alleged to be a Laskhar-e-Toiba activist, Sameer was arrested by the BSF while entering West Bengal from Bangladesh last month. He is now in the custody of Mumbai police.

During a nacro-analysis test, Sameer, who had allegedly helped different militant outfits to sneak into India, recently confessed to having meetings with Bilal, now the most wanted person in connection with the Hyderabad blast.

The Hyderabad police got onto the trail of Bilal, an alleged member of the Bangladesh-based Harkat-ul-Jihad Al Islami (HUJI), an Islamic fundamentalist organisation, after recovery of a mobile SIM card at the Mecca mosque after the blast. The SIM card was believed to have been used to trigger the explosion.

Tracking down its history, sleuths found that the SIM card was bought by Bilal under a fake name in Rupnarayanpur in Jharkhand and it was activated in Asansol in West Bengal.

Though officials here denied having detained anyone in this connection, Jharkhand police said one person was held by West Bengal police on Sunday last from Mihijam. However, the person was released subsequently, they said.

Altogether fourteen people were killed and many injured in the blast that took place immediately after the Friday prayer in the crowded mosque.

''The CID is assisting the Hyderabad police. We cannot say anything more but different agencies are working on the probe,'' Inspector General of Police (Law and Order) Raj Kanojia said.

Police in Hyderabad believe that the Bangladesh-based HUJI was behind the blast and its activist Bilal, a resident of Hyderabad, had designed the plot. A phone call from Bangladesh was believed to have detonated the Improvised Explosive Device (IED), stuffed with RDX and TNT in the mosque.

The Bengal link to the blast gained ground after reports said that Bilal had arrived in Kolkata last month from Gujarat.

UNI