Police close to first arrest in B'lore blasts

Bangalore, September 16 Following the SIMI line of investigations, the Bangalore police could be on the verge of announcing its first arrest in the July 25 bomb Blasts across the city that left one person dead and eight injured.

A special police team constituted to probe the nine low-intensity blasts that preceded the Ahmedabad blasts of July 26 have been interrogating a 23-year-old student of an arts and architecture college from Bijapur over the past two days.

The police had been looking for Abdul Samee, whose name figured in the interrogations of several alleged SIMI activists arrested around the country, including in the Ahmedabad, Jaipur cases. Sources said Samee was being questioned on his presence in Bangalore around the July 25 blasts and his absence from Bijapur over the weekend of the September 13 Delhi blasts.

The Bangalore police and IB are conducting the questioning.

Samee is believed to be one of the 20 who participated in a SIMI training conclave held on the organisation’s foundation day, on April 25, 2007, at Castle Rock on Karnataka-Goa border. It was Adnan alias Hafeez Hussain, a SIMI leader from Karnataka arrested in Indore on March 23 this year with 12 other SIMI functionaries, who reportedly gave his name.

Abdul Subhan Qureshi alias Tauqeer — believed to be a key lynchpin in the blasts that have occurred around the country since July 2006 — Shahbaz Hussain, a key accused in the Jaipur blasts, and Abu Bashar, named as the mastermind of the Ahmedabad blasts, were reportedly all present at this camp.

According to sources, investigations into SIMI activities prior to the Jaipur blasts of May 13 had also thrown up Samee’s name and the Karnataka police had even zeroed in on a student of the Malik Sandal Institute of Art and Architecture. But no arrests were made after the police were told that the student’s name was Mohammed Samee and not Abdul Samee.

Sources said investigations had returned to the architecture student after his name figured in the interrogation of Shahbaz Hussain in Jaipur.

Samee’s family in Bijapur, however, say the arrest is a result of mistaken identity. His father Raj Ahmed Bagewadi has produced college records to show that his son goes by the name of Mohammed Samee Bagewadi and not Abdul Samee.

The investigations surrounding the architecture student show that the Bangalore police is also taking the same line as the Jaipur, Ahmedabad and Delhi blast cases.

Investigations into the Bangalore blasts have until now produced little results. A parallel case of dumping of a large quantity of ammonium nitrate on the outskirts of Bangalore, a day before the blasts, is also being probed.