Expanding their probe into the IS terror module which they busted in Hyderabad recently, a team of National Investigation Agency (NIA) sleuths reached Anantapur town in Andhra Pradesh on Tuesday along with an arrested suspect, Mohammed Ibrahim Yazdani, to collect clues about his visit to the place a month ago.
It is learnt from reliable sources within NIA that the 10-member team had brought Yazdani to Anantapur to verify and further investigate his alleged confession that he along with two of his accomplices visited the town to procure arms.
The NIA team visited the Nandi Lodge where Yazdani and his accomplices stayed and were expecting to meet a person who would help them in getting arms. The team quizzed the lodge staff and is learnt to have seized guest log books having details of those who stayed there during the last two months, their addresses and identity proofs submitted by them.
Sources said Yazdani and his accomplices had failed in their mission of meeting the person who promised arms though they stayed there for three days, over a month ago. It was then that Yazdani and others proceeded to Nanded in Maharashtra where they succeeded in getting the weapons. These were subsequently seized by the NIA.
The Anantapur police remained tight-lipped about the NIA team’s visit but sources in the lodge confirmed that a police team had indeed visited the lodge, made detailed inquiries and taken away the records. The NIA team along with Yazdani had since left the town.
Meanwhile, the fact that Yazdani and his group chose Anantapur to shop for arms in itself indicates how the district attained notoriety in the illegal sale of firearms besides being a transportation conduit for drugs and red sanders. In fact, Chalichimala Satyanarayana was arrested by the Anantapur police in August last year for being a supplier of arms to several people within the district and from outside.
Several others were also arrested in connection with the case then while Bellary MP B. Sriramulu was served a notice after Satyanarayana confessed that he had sold a firearm to him too. Indeed, arms and several rounds of bullets were recovered from various people across the district who served as intermediaries for Satyanarayana.
