Bhatkal probe: Call to Pakistan cannot be basis of investigation

The Bengaluru police find themselves in a difficult position when it comes to cases of terrorism. We are not speaking about the 50 day old Church Street blasts case which they are yet to crack. There was one more incident involving some youth from Bhatkal who were picked up on the allegation that they were supplying arms to the Indian Mujahideen which carried out the Dilsukhnagar blasts in Hyderabad two years back.

The police had arrested Syed Ismail Afaq, Abdur Rehman and Saddam Hussain on the allegation that they had supplied ammunition to the Indian Mujahideen operatives. The police also claimed that these youth would help join the dots on terror cases right from the year 2010.

The National Investigating Agency which has been probing all Indian Mujahideen cases since 2010 including the Dilsukhnagar blasts case is however not impressed with the probe in Karnataka. There is a lot that does not add up and we have a conclusive investigation into the Dilsukhnagar blasts case, the officer told Oneindia.

Oneindia had reported earlier that the NIA is shy of taking up cases pertaining to terror in Karnataka for a host of reasons. The Bhatkal case gives the NIA yet another reason to stay away from Karnataka.

Doubts raised about Bengaluru police claims:

The police in Bengaluru are largely basing their entire investigation on the role played by a person called Afaq. The NIA says that all through their probe into the Dilsukhnagar blasts, they never once found the name of Afaq crop up.

The Dilksukhnagar case is an open and shut one and we find no role played by Afaq in it. We have also not found any role played the other two persons who also had been taken into custody by the police in Karnataka, the officer from the NIA also informed.

The Dilsukhnagar blasts was the handiwork of four persons- Yasin Bhatkal, Tehsin Akthar, Assadullah Akthar and Waqas Ahmed. These operated as a four member gang and never involved anyone else as they felt that information could leak and this could hamper their plans.

Moreover, as per the investigations and also the testimony of Yasin Bhatkal we have found that the date on which the explosives were supplied and the date being quoted by the Bengaluru police are different.

Misdirected probe:

It appears as though the police in Karnataka were in a teething hurry to come to some sort of conclusion. When some aspects relating to the case were questioned and nothing proved to be conclusive they said that he had called Pakistan regularly.

However the NIA has checked into these details too thoroughly and found that he had been calling his father in law in Pakistan. Afaq a homeopathy doctor is married to a Pakistani from Karachi. He had made regular calls to his father in law and we did not find any terror link to it, the NIA official also said.

The calls to Pakistan seem to be blown out of proportion or rather misconstrued, the official also stated.