The city police on Thursday night brought two suspects from Patna to the city in connection with the Church Street blast on December 28 last year.
The police acquired a body warrant for Haidar Ali and his associate Umar Siddiqui, both charged with the serial blasts at Narendra Modi’s Hunkar rally in 2013 in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections. The two — arrested by the National Investigation Agency seven months ago and charged in January this year — were brought to Bengaluru in a special flight.
The two suspects are said to be members of both the Indian Mujahideen (IM) and the Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). While police initially suspected the involvement of the SIMI module that had fled from a prison in Madhya Pradesh in 2013, police are now open to probing other suspected modules too.
Additional Commissioner of Police (Law and Order) Alok Kumar, who is heading the Special Investigation Team that is probing the case, said: “CCTV footage and call records have yielded little results,” he said. Explosives used in the Hunkar rally blasts and the Bodh Gaya blasts in Bihar were similar to those used in the Church Street blast. This has led the city police to bring the two suspects to the city and grill them for any information that may provide a lead.
The two suspects, however, were not involved as they were in NIA custody, the day of the Church Street blast.
