NIA arrests man who provided logistics support to suspect

THE NATIONAL Investigation Agency (NIA) on Thursday announced the arrest of a 30- year old man ink ar nat aka for“providing logistical support” for a bomb blast executed at The Ra mesh war am ca fe in ben ga lu ru on March 1. It is the first arrest in the case made by the agency.

The NIA, which carried out multiple searches across Karnataka and Tamil Nadu on Wednesday, said that one of the persons who had been searched, Muzammil Shareef, had been placed under arrest. Shareef's house inc hi km a gal ur was among the 12 locations searched by the NIA in Karnataka.

“Muzammil Shareef was picked up and placed in custody as a co-conspirator after NIA teams cracked down at 18 locations, including 12 in Karnataka, five in Tamil Nadu and one in UP,” the NIA said in a statement. A computer and some documents were seized from Shareef's residence in Kalasa region of Chikmagalur, said officials.

Shareef, who has a diploma in engineering, had come under the police radar in 2020 during an investigation into an Islamic State recruitment plot in south India, but was never arrested, sources said. He is alleged to have provided materials that went into making the IED that was planted at the cafe by a man caught on CCTV cameras and now identified as the “missing suspect”.

Then ia declared on thursday that it has identified the man as Mussavir Hussain Shazib, a missing suspect linked to as many as four terror cases in Karnataka since 2020. sh azib and another associate,abdul ma the en ta ha, both wanted since 2020, have been named as accused number 1 and 2 in the Rameshwaram cafe blast case, sources said.

“Ni a, which took over the case on March 3, had earlier identified the main accused Mussavir Hussain Shazib who had carried out the blast. It had also identified another conspirator, Abdul Matheen Taha, who is also wanted by the agency in other cases. Both the men are on the run,” the NIA said.

Both Shazib and Taha hail from the Thirthahalli area in Shivamogga district of Karnataka. They are linked to a south India IS recruitment case from 2020 called the Al Hind case, a graffiti case in Man ga lu ru, both in the year 2020, an IED testing conspiracy in Shivamogga and an accidental bomb blast in an autorickshaw in Mangaluru, both in 2022.

“NIA investigations have revealed that Muzammil Shareef had extended logistics support to the other two identified accused in the case involving the IED explosion at the ca fe ," then ia said. a total of nine people were injured in the blast on March 1.

On Wednesday, the NIA conducted raids at the homes of Shazib and Taha in Shivamogga and Shareef in Chi kama gal ur, besides the residential premises and shops of other suspects. “Various digital devices were seized during the searches along with cash ,” the NIA said.

A close associate of Shazib and Taha, identified as Sardar Naveed in Shivamogga, was also searched.

The searches extended to Bhatka lin coastal karna t aka to the home of abdul ra bi ya ,26, the son of Mohammed Iqbal alias Iqbal Shahbandari, 56, the older of the two brothers from Bhatkal who are considered founding members of the Indian Mujahideen, a home grown terror group( wit hi si links) accused of carrying out multiple blasts in India in 20062013 period.