CHENNAI: A
Crime Branch Criminal Investigation Department
(
CB-CID
) team from Chennai, is in Bhubaneswar, Odisha, to question four suspects that were arrested in connection with the twin blasts on the GuwahatiBengaluru Kaziranga Express at Chennai Central on May 1, 2014. The explosions killed a software engineer and injured 14 others.
Investigators said police arrested the four suspects, members of the proscribed Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), in Rourkela on February 17.
An investigating officer identified them as Sheikh Mehboob, 26, Amjad Khan, 26, Zakir Hussein, 33 and Mo hammad Salique, 32. The Odisha police arrested them after a brief exchange of gunfire in Rourkela.
“They were involved in the daring Khandwa jailbreak, in which seven hardcore SIMI members escaped, a series of bank robberies, terror activities and murder of policemen in various states,“ the officer said. CB-CID officers questioned the suspects on Monday and Tuesday. The officers will apply for a transit warrant to bring them to Chennai for the investigation of the twin blasts.
The blasts killed 24-yearold software engineer Swati Parachuri and injured 14 others. Parachuri, an employee of Tata Consultancy Services in Bengaluru, was heading to Guntur, Andhra Pradesh, via Chennai when SIMI operatives triggered the blasts at Chennai Central.
The National Investigating Agency (NIA) and Intelligence Bureau (IB) have also questioned the four suspects, who investigators suspect have links with Pakistani spy agency ISI. A team from the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) will also interrogate the SIMI operatives on their links abroad, the officer said.
“Their associates Zakir Hussein and Mohammad Aijazuddin triggered the blasts on the Kaziranga Express at Chennai Central,“ the officer said. “We identified them from security camera footage in the station.“
Apart from NIA, IB and the Tamil Nadu and Chhattisgarh police officers, police teams from Madhya Pradesh and Telangana also visited in Bhubaneswar to question the four arrested suspects. Police teams from Uttar Pradesh, Kerala and Rajasthan are also likely to visit Odisha soon to elicit information from them about SIMI modules and sleeper cells in those states.
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