Alleged Indian Mujahideen co-founder Mohammed Ahmed Zarar Siddibapa alias Yasin Bhatkal and his accomplice Asadullah Akhtar alias Haddi were on Friday sent to 12-day custody of the National Investigation Agency for interrogation in an open-ended case registered against the suspected members of the outfit for hatching a conspiracy to carry out terror activities across the country.
With their faces covered, Yasin and Asadullah were brought to the court of District Judge I.S. Mehta. During the in-camera proceedings, the NIA counsel, it is learnt, pressed for 14 days’ custody of the duo for making recoveries and further arrests in the case. Last month, the agency got non-bailable warrants issued against the two along with 10 other suspected members of the outfit.
Defence counsel M.S. Khan argued that the NIA had no material evidence to establish that Siddibapa was the same Yasin who was involved in terror activities. As cases had been registered against Yasin in different parts of country, the agency could not carry out a parallel probe into all of them, counsel said.
The NIA said Yasin was wanted in about 40 cases registered in Delhi, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra. He was suspected to have been involved in many more cases also. The agency submitted that the two accused were required to be taken to places in and outside the Capital during investigations.
Earlier, the agency moved an application seeking permission to keep both accused handcuffed while taking them to different States. The court allowed this plea. The NIA had on July 17 filed a charge sheet against five arrested suspected IM militants — Danish Ansari, Obaid-Ur-Rehman, Imran Khan, Aftab Alam and Syed Maqbool — mentioning Yasin, Asadullah and the others as absconders. The agency alleged that Yasin had co-founded the IM along with Riyaz and Iqbal Bhatkal, who are now suspected to be in Pakistan.
Security agencies alleged that the outfit, banned on June 22, 2009, had carried out the Varanasi and Mumbai blasts in 2006, the Hyderabad blasts in August 2007 and the serial blasts in Varanasi, Faizabad and Lucknow courts in Uttar Pradesh in November 2007. Another module of the outfit had allegedly triggered the September 2008 serial blasts in Delhi and Ahmedabad blasts in July 2008. It is suspected to have been involved in the 2010 Chinnaswamy Stadium (Bangalore) and German Bakery blasts, besides 2011 serial explosions in Mumbai.
