NIA court gives cops 12-day custody of terror suspects

Agencies

Bengaluru, 10 Jan 2015: The three terror suspects arrested by the Bengaluru police on Thursday have been remanded in 12-day police custody even as police stated there was no similarity between the explosives found in the Church Street blast and the bomb-making materials they reportedly seized at the suspects’ flat. 

 

The suspects—Syed Ismail Afaq, 34, Saddam Hussein, 35, and Abdus Subur, 24—were produced before the 49th Additional City Civil Sessions Court (NIA Special Court) on Friday afternoon. The police submitted a request for police custody. 

 

Meanwhile, one of the suspects, Saddam Hussein, a scrap merchant in Bhatkal, made an oral submission that the police have tortured him. The judge asked for the medical report and remanded all the three suspects in police custody till January 21.

 

Sources claimed that the materials seized in Bhatkal suggest that the suspects were in “different stages of making highly sophisticated circuitry explosives”. A police officer said that preliminary investigation revealed that the suspects were “extending logistic support to a terror network”.

 

The handler, who is suspected to be abroad, has been planning to carry out terror strikes at several places. “The quantity of explosive substances recovered shows that the suspects and their handlers had large designs to carry out bomb blasts. The suspects will be interrogated based on the credible input gathered before the raids,” the officer said. 

 

Police Commissioner M N Reddi said that some similarities had been found between the explosive substances used in other blasts in the country and  materials seized in Bhatkal. 

 

“The circuit boards seized in Bhatkal were also used in blasts at Hyderabad and Chennai. We also suspect explosives used in some terror acts might have supplied from Karnataka. The investigation is still at the preliminary stage and we still need to find out if the suspects were in touch with other persons in the State or outside,” Reddi said.