All the four accused in the Kollam collectorate bomb blast case of June 15, 2016, who were produced before Principal District and Sessions Court Judge George Mathew on Wednesday, were sent to police custody till March 23 to facilitate investigation and evidence collection pertaining to the case.
The accused were arrested by an NIA team during inquiry into the Nellore court complex blast of September 13, 2016. The four are natives of Madurai in Tamil Nadu. They are Abbas Ali, 27, Karim Raja, 22, Dawood Sulaiman, 22, and Shamshudeen, 23.
They were charged with relevant Sections of Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, Explosives Act together with other relevant Sections of the Indian Penal Code. The four, who also figure as accused in the September 13 bomb blast at the Nellore court complex, were brought to Kollam on Tuesday from the custody of Nellore police.
As per directions from the court, they would be lodged at a specially arranged cell at the Kollam East police station complex. The investigation team has evidence that Karim Raja had visited the Kollam court complex a week before the blast to record visuals in his mobile phone.
He then reached Madurai to conspire the blast with the other accused.
On the day of the blast, Karim Raja reached Kollam in a KSRTC bus from Tenkasi and returned after executing the blast. After this, he reached Kollam on September 13, the day on which the court complex blast at Nellore in Hyderabad took place.
The four are also accused in cases pertaining to similar court complex blasts at Chittoor, Mysore, and Malappuram, the police said.
Their faces were masked when brought to the court as they had to be produced for the identification parade in the Malappuram and Nellore blast cases. After the procedures in Kollam, the accused will be handed over to the custody of police team investigating the Malappuram collectorate blast case.
According to the police, all the accused are attached to the ‘Base Movement’ that backs Al-Qaeda. But so far, the police have no evidence to link them to anyone based in Kerala. An improvised electronic device (IED) had caused the low intensity explosion in Kollam in which one person was injured.
