KOLKATA: Abdul Matheen Taha and Mussavir Hussain Shazib - two fugitive suspects of the March 1 Bengaluru cafe blast who were arrested at Bengal's seafront town Digha Friday - had kept changing phones, SIM cards and IDs to evade arrest but left behind the proverbial cookie crumb at a modest mobile repair shop in Kolkata's Chandni Chowk market.
That vital clue helped investigators trace alleged mastermind Taha and bomb planter Shazib to a Digha hotel, leading to their capture in a coordinated operation by NIA and Bengal Police. They were taken Saturday to Bengaluru, where a local court remanded them in police custody for 10 days.
The duo landed in Kolkata on March 12 and checked in a hotel in Esplanade. The breakthrough came when one of the suspects visited Micromagic Infotech in Chandni to fix his phone, leaving it at the shop due to technical issues. The shop owner inserted "one of our own SIM cards" into the handset "to find out if there was any problem with the microphone" - unwittingly alerting investigators to the suspects' whereabouts using the phone's IMEI number.
Shop owner Abdul Rab said he sought more time when the man returned to the shop in the evening for the phone. The suspect returned to collect the phone next day, but it remained unrepaired.
Later, NIA contacted Rab for information regarding the suspect's visit. "I told them whatever I could remember," he said. His shop has CCTV cameras, but there's no video of the suspect's visits since footage is not stored for more than a certain number of days.
When TOI showed Rab pictures of the suspects, he recognised one of them, and revealed subsequent questioning by NIA and state sleuths.