K’taka court grants NIA 10-day custody of cafe blast accused
A special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court in Bengaluru on Saturday granted the national agency 10 days custody of two accused in the Rameshwaram Cafe blast case for further investigation.
Mussavir Hussain Shazib and Adbul Matheen Ahmed Taahaa were produced before an NIA special court judge .
The accused were brought to the state capital from Kolkata on transit remand, for their alleged role in March 1 blast at Rameshwaram Cafe.
According to NIA, Shazib placed the Improvised Explosive Device (IED) at the cafe and Taahaa was the mastermind.
The low-intensity bomb injured nine people. Abdul Matheen Taha (30), the alleged mastermind, and Mussavir Hussain Shazib (30), who planted the bomb, were tracked down in the early hours on Friday and were arrested by an NIA team under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, or UAPA.
Both are alleged to be associated with the IS Shivamogga module, and were on agency’s radar since 2020, said an official at the agency who didn’t want to be named.
Last month, the NIA announced a reward of ₹10 lakh each for those providing information leading to the arrest of these two accused.
They are arrested on Friday, after a 42-day-long cross-country multi-agency manhunt.
In the course of the manhunt, the federal agency on March 29 released photographs of the two after scanning footage from hundreds of CCTVs in Bengaluru, Chennai and other cities; it also announced a reward of ₹10 lakh for each of them. Investigators say that a cap left by Shazib at the cafe took them to a Chennai mall from where it was bought.
Apart from releasing their pictures, NIA carried out searches at 18 locations in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh last month, and even questioned several of their old acquaintances and friends from their college and school days.
“In a significant development, the absconders in Rameswaram Cafe blast case, Adbul Matheen Taha and Mussavir Hussain Shazib, were traced out to their hideout near Kolkata and were apprehended by the NIA team,” an NIA spokesperson said in a statement. “Shazib is the accused who placed the IED (improvised explosive device) at the cafe and Taha is the mastermind behind the planning, execution of blast and subsequent evasion from the clutches of law,” NIA spokesperson said on Friday.
One of their associates, Muzammil Shareef, a resident of
Chikkamagaluru, was arrested on March 27 for allegedly providing logistics support such as cell phones, fake SIM cards etc. used to plan and execute the attack. Another member of the Shivamogga IS module, Maaz Muneer Ahmed, was taken into custody by NIA from the Bengaluru central prison in the second week of March and was interrogated in the case.
According to officials, Maaz Ahmed, 25, was indoctrinated by another accused, Arafath Ali, on the instructions of Taha and Shabiz. Ahmed wrote graffiti in support of terror groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) at two places in Mangaluru in November 2020. The same module was behind the November 19, 2022 pressure cooker blast in an autorickshaw — the bomb was meant for the Kadri Manjunatha Temple in Mangaluru but the bomber in that case, Mohammad Shariq, was himself injured in the blast as the IED accidentally exploded on the way. Shariq was taken into custody.