| Sunday , January 11 , 2015 |
Burdwan blast suspect held- Arrest from Jharkhand railway site |
| Our Bureau |
 Rezaul Karim, who National Investigation Agency officers said ferried Bengal-made bombs to Bangladesh, was arrested in Sahebgunj district at a place 450km from Ranchi. He had been working as a labourer at a railway track-laying site there for over a month. "Based on source information, we had sent a team to watch him a few days ago. This morning, Karim was arrested," inspector-general S.K. Singh of the federal agency said. Karim, sources said, walked into a trap this morning. "For the past week, he had stopped reporting for work," an officer of the central agency said. "So we got a munshi of the private company handling the project to call him and ask him to come and collect his dues. He failed to smell the trap." After his capture, Karim allegedly tried to throw the sleuths off the scent by providing incorrect personal details. He was arrested after an hour of rigorous grilling. "According to data we had verified earlier, Karim is the son of Abdul Latib, resident of Raghunathganj in Murshidabad district. But after his capture, he gave his father's name as Mantu Sheikh," an investigator said. Sleuths claimed to have seized a cellphone from Karim, apart from Rs 14,000 in cash. The contacts list and call records are expected to lead to people who gave him shelter in Bengal and later helped him flee the state after the October 2 blast in a bomb-making flat. Investigators had found a phone number scribbled on the palm of blast survivor Abdul Hakim and traced the SIM to Karim. It had been the last number dialled after the blast from the phone of Hakim's wife Alima Bibi. A National Security Guard search of Karim's Badshahi Road residence in Burdwan netted 39 explosive devices hidden above a false ceiling over the washroom, days after Bengal police failed to find anything in a search. A reward of Rs 5 lakh was offered for information leading to his arrest. Karim was produced before a Jharkhand court today and will be brought to Calcutta on transit remand. Agency sources said Karim had been in close touch with Kausar Ali and Jahirul Sheikh, fellow bomb couriers to Bangladesh who have been dodging the police. An intelligence official in Jharkhand acknowledged that the Jamaat module in Bengal had spread its tentacles into the neighbouring state. "We know that several of the accused took shelter in the Pakur and Sahebganj districts of Jharkhand after the Burdwan blast," he said. |