Afaque, No. 2 in IM, a prize catch: Bengaluru cops

Bengaluru: Syed Ismail Afaque (34), one of the three men arrested by the city police on Thursday is a big catch, crowed authorities who admitted that they had been keeping an eye on him and other members of his family, as Afaque had emerged as the new number two in the Indian Mujahideen.

The Intelligence Bureau had tipped off the State Internal Security Division and the city police about the three men from Bhatkal and the ‘huge dump of explosives’ and ‘timer devices,’ which led to the arrest of Afaque’s cousin Abdus Subur (24) from the Cox Town apartment and Saddam Hussain (35), picked up from Bhatkal on Thursday.

While Bhatkal, a coastal town in Karwar, is protesting against attempts to malign its innocent citizens and defame the town, top police and intelligence sources told this newspaper that the suspects’ links with the banned terror organisation were indisputable.

“Afaque has been in touch with Iqbal and Riyaz Shahbandari alias Bhatkal in Pakistan and has been involved in major terror attacks in the country,” alleged the officer.

Afaque is a medical doctor and is known as Dr Afaque Lanka. “He has been practicing in a local clinic in Bengaluru. He was earlier the Karwar district president of Popular Front of India,” he said.

The three suspected Indian Mujahideen (IM) operatives, who were arrested on Thursday, were reportedly planning terror attacks around Republic Day and the police were keeping tabs on their activities for quite sometime.

Police sources said that all the three accused Syed Ismail Afaque, Saddam Hussain and Abdus Subur - are highly radicalised. “We have arrested them at the right time.

They were under our radar from almost a year. Only after confirming their nexus with the IM, we have arrested them. All we can say is we have averted major terror attacks by arresting them,” a senior police officer said.

“We are yet to grill them and get information on what were their exact plans, but it is confirmed that they had made some big plans on carrying out terror attack around Republic Day.

We are suspecting that they have also provided explosives to carry out the attacks in other parts of the country and we will question them on this,” the officer said.

On the background of the arrested men, he said that the trio had links with some members of Karnataka Forum for Dignity (KFD) and Popular Front of India (PFI), and they also took part in some meetings held by these organisations.

“They have been radicalised some years ago. How they established contact with the IM and whether they were in direct contact with IM chief Riaz Bhatkal is yet to be probed,” the official added.

Meanwhile, he revealed that Afaque was trained in making explosives and was keen to recruit some more young men to the terror outfit.

“He has also visited Pakistan on several occasions, as his wife is from that country. It is strongly suspected that he had links with some terror organisations there,” the officer revealed.

On allegations that the three were targeted just because they hailed from Bhatkal, DCP (Crime) Abhishek Goyal said, “It was a 100 per cent genuine raid in which CCB and other officers recovered explosives from the house of Sabroor.

It belonged to this arrested gang. This was based on inputs of years of professional police work by multiple agencies. They are connected to SIMI and IM.”
 
Police custody till Jan 21
Meanwhile, the police produced the accused trio before a court and the court has remanded them to police custody till January 21.

The police requested the court to remand them in police custody as they wanted to question them about their activities. The magistrate considered their request and remanded them in police custody.