Mangalore, April 9: Close aides of Indian Mujahideen Co-Founder Yaseen Bhatkal and IM members namely Tahseen Akhtar also known as Monu and Jiya Rehman also called Waqas were brought to Mangalore on April 8, Tuesday by a special flight from Delhi, for higher interrogation.
The suspected criminals were accompanied by an eight member special police team. From the airport, they were taken in a special vehicle to various places in the city. Ullal and Zephyr Heights at Attavar which was allegedly the hide-out of ultras to make explosives were the major places they got interrogated.
Waqaz was arrested on March 22 at Ajmer while Tahseen Akhtar was arrested at Panitanki on the Indo-Nepal border on March 25.
The two had stayed at the Attavar apartment along with Yaseen Bhatkal and it was here that they had plotted the Hyderabad blast. Interrogations also revealed that they were specialists in making improvised explosive devices.
String of explosions
After igniting the bomb in Pune leading to explosion Wakas and Asadulla Akar came down to Mangalore and were together with Yaasin. When in Mangalore, Riyaz was sending news to Wakas from Bhatkal. These three got together and cunningly engineered an explosion in Hyderabad on February 21st. Subsequent to this Wakas and Akar were down in Mangalore city and stayed in a place called Xavier Heights in Attavar in the company of Yaasin. The year 2010 onwards the string of explosions can be connected to Yaasin Bhatkal, Tehsin Akar, Asadulla Akar alias Haddi, Zia-Ur-Rahman alias Wakas.
Yaasin arrested in Nepal
Yaasin leaving the rest of the gang in Mangalore had gone to Nepal. In the course of his arrest in Nepal, Riyaz Bhatkal ordered the gang to flee from Mangalore. On these instructions Wakas went to Manaar in Kerala and Akar went to Mumbai. Wakas moved from Manaar to Odisha, West Bengal, Maharashtra and such other places and tried to hide himself. He was in communication with Tehsin Akar. According to his confession he fell into a police dragnet when he was plotting extremist activities in Rajasthan.
