He was a cricket crazy guy: Neighbours

BHATKAL: Friends and relatives simply refuse to believe that the cricket crazy boy they knew could be a terrorist.
Abdul Samad Bhatkal, who was picked up by the Mumbai ATS in connection with the Bangalore and Pune blasts, was just another guy next door.
Speaking to the Sunday Times of India, his uncle Mohammad Yakoob says he has been victimized. Neighbours remember him as the guy who was crazy about cricket.They are all hopeful that the ATS will give him a clean chit.
A worried Yakoob says Samad travelled to Dubai on February 25 on a visiting visa with a return ticket for May 25. It was a private visit to meet his father who is in Dubai, he explained.
Neighbours Mohammad Ashfaque and Mohammad Yasin say he was the kind of guy who used to take permission from his uncle even if he had to travel just 5 km beyond the town limits. "It's distressing that he has been detained. It's a double whammy for his mother. The family has no clue of the whereabouts of his elder brother Mohammad Ahmad who has been absconding for the past four years," they say. Ahmad is being projected as Yasin Bhatkal by the police.
The Dubai police confiscated Samad's passport a month and half ago. "Why was he not taken into custody then. Why did they wait till he landed at the Mangalore airport to take him into custody," the family questions.
The Bhatkal police said that Samad was not involved in any kind of crime in his native town. DySP C B Vedamurthy told STOI that the police was aware of Samad going to Dubai on a visiting visa. He had completed all the formalities, they said.
He said Samad was summoned last year after the Bangalore blasts as his brother Yasin Bhatkal was allegedly involved in it. But he was not summoned in connection with the Pune blast. He said Samad had studied upto SSLC and did his I PUC in Bhatkal and later went to Bangalore to do his II PU. "We did not put any surveillance on him," he said and added that ATS has not sought any information from his office.