Saturday, February 20, 2016

Odisha SIMI arrests: ‘Accused planned blasts to avenge Muzaffarnagar riots

Police officials of different States and National Investigation Agency (NIA) sleuths have arrived in Odisha to grill the five operatives of banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) while the Special Task Force (STF) of the Crime Branch is grilling the arrested operatives at undisclosed locations here.
The STF has formed different teams to carry out the investigation process smoothly.
While a special team is engaged for quizzing the terror suspects, another one is looking after their security aspects.
A woman officer was also engaged to quiz the female terror suspect while all the suspects would be quizzed in three shifts, revealed a top police source.
On Thursday, the suspects had been interrogated in the presence of Crime Branch Special DG BK Sharma and Crime Branch IG and STF chief Arun Bothra.
The STF has got the five SIMI operatives on a 13-day remand for interrogation which will end on March 1.
Besides, an NIA team has reached Rourkela and begun its investigations, sources revealed.
Meanwhile, a three-member team of the Madhya Pradesh police arrived at Nangamahal in Bhadrak, where the five operatives had taken a house on rent, and started investigation.
On Thursday too, CB Special DG Sharma along with his deputy Arun Bothra rushed to the rented house along with two of the arrested SIMI operatives
During raid, police seized SIMI magazine, a dongle, two mobile phones, a pen drive, and wires from the rented house.
Posing as carpenters, the suspects had stayed in the house. In November last year, they suddenly left the place after locking the room.
These activists of the banned outfit had escaped from the district jail in MP’s Khandwa in 2013 by scaling the jail’s 14-feet-high wall and police teams of multiple States were looking for them since them.
An eight-member STF team with the five suspects in its custody amid tight security had left Rourkela for Bhubaneswar and reached Bhubaneswar on Friday morning after getting them on a 13-day remand from the Sub-Divisional Judicial Magistrate (SDJM) Court, Rourkela.
The SIMI activists Mehboob Khan, Mohd Salik, Amjad Khan, Zakir Hussain and Mehboob’s mother Najma Biwi were arrested from the Quereshi Mohalla of the Nala Road locality of Rourkela in the wee hours Wednesday after an exchange of fire with a joint team of Telangana and Odisha police.

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