Yasin in Karnataka police custody, will be brought to Bangalore today
New Delhi: A special NIA court on Friday handed over the custody of Indian Mujahideen (IM) co-founder Yasin Bhatkal to the Karnataka police till January 28. The police will interrogate him on his involvement in the blasts at the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore in April 2010. Bhatkal is likely to be brought to the city on Saturday.
District Judge I.S. Mehta allowed the application by the Karnataka police, seeking Bhatkal’s custody. The police had informed the court about a magisterial court in Bangalore having issued a production warrant against the 30-year-old Bhatkal in connection with the blasts case in which other suspects of the banned IM, including one of its co-founders, Riyaz Bhatkal, and Fasih Mehmood, are accused.
Mehmood has been arrested. Fifteen people, including some security personnel, were injured in the low-intensity blasts at Chinnaswamy Stadium on April 17, 2010, hours before an IPL match between Royal Challengers and Mumbai Indians.
During the proceedings, Tihar Jail authorities submitted their report on the plea filed by Bhatkal and his aide Asadullah Akhtar in which they have claimed there was a threat to their lives inside the high-security prison.
Both accused were kept in judicial custody in Tihar Jail in connection with various terror attack cases. In the report, the superintendent of Tihar Jail No. 4, where Bhatkal and Akhtar were lodged, said, “A detailed inquiry was conducted and it is revealed that the accused had never brought the matter before jail authorities regarding any threats that they would be killed in the jail.” The jail superintendent added that, “Both the accused are lodged in the high-risk ward with special security deployed there round the clock.”
Bhatkal and Akhtar, in their plea, had claimed that the Tihar Jail superintendent had “threatened” that they would be killed and alleged that the “attitude and behaviour” of prison authorities towards them had been abusive.
The NIA’s Hyderabad unit had earlier taken Bhatkal and Akhtar to Hyderabad in connection with the Dilsukhnagar blasts after their arrest last year on September 21 and September 17. The blasts in Hyderabad had claimed 16 lives. The accused duo was arrested by NIA from the Indo-Nepal border on the night of August 28 last year.
Bhatkal, who hails from Bhatkal village in Udupi district, was allegedly involved in a string of terror attacks in Ahmedabad, Surat, Bangalore, Pune, Delhi and Hyderabad, the NIA had said. Bhatkal, who was earlier associated with the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), is alleged to have hatched a conspiracy with others to wage a war against India.
