The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has arrested a youth from Jammu and Kashmir over suspected involvement in the conspiracy behind the recent bomb blast at the Delhi High Court.
Wasim Akram Malik was on Friday produced in a special court here, which remanded him in NIA custody for 14 days, during which he would also be confronted with co-accused Amir Abbas Dev.
The arrest comes exactly a month after the September 7 blast. The elder son of a worker at a hydel project in Kishtwar, Wasim went to Bangladesh about five years ago for medical studies at a Dhaka institute.
Preliminary enquiries suggested that Wasim was in Jammu on September 7 when the blast took place. Suspecting his involvement, the NIA contacted his father seeking his cooperation in the probe and sought his presence for questioning. At his father's instance, Wasim returned to India and was handed over to the NIA at the Delhi airport. According to sources, the NIA is yet to establish Wasim's exact role in the conspiracy. He would be probed for any links with the Bangladesh-based Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islami (HuJI) or any other outfit.
Even as the NIA remained tight-lipped about the timing and place of Wasim's arrest, besides his affiliation to any terror outfit, sources said the agency received information about him from one Azhar Ali, an alleged HM recruiter presently lodged in Jammu's Kotbalwal Jail.
According to sources, NIA officials had recently quizzed Azhar and found that Wasim's teenaged brother Junaid had been initiated into terrorism. Junaid allegedly disappeared a year ago and his family has lodged a missing person report. Intelligence agencies suspect that Junaid has been operating from somewhere in the Kashmir Valley.
In a related development, the special court sent Amir Abbas Dev to seven days in NIA's custody and ordered that the third accused in the case be produced before a Juvenile Justice Board. The two were arrested in Kishtwar for their alleged complicity in sending an email on behalf of the HuJI, claiming responsibility for the blast. The email had been sent from a local cyber café hours after the explosion.
