A file picture of Yasin Bhatkal who was arrested on Wednesday night
Yasin Bhatkal, the alleged operations head of the Indian Mujahideen, has been brought to Delhi from Bihar. He is currently being produced before a court in the city, where the National Investigating Agency or NIA is likely to ask for his 14-day custody.
Bhatkal, who is among the 12 most-wanted terrorists in India, was arrested on Wednesday night in north Bihar, close to the Nepal border. A special plane carrying him and Asadullah Akhtar, an alleged bomb planter in the Indian Mujahideen who was arrested moments after Bhatkal, landed in Delhi at round 3 this afternoon.
Police from Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Maharashtra and Karnataka have lined up to interrogate Bhatkal about terrors attacks in their states.
As alleged chief of operations and co-founder of the Indian Mujahideen, Bhatkal is accused of planning and executing some of the deadliest terror attacks in India in recent years, the most recent being February's twin blasts in a crowded market in Hyderabad in which 16 people were killed and 80 injured.
Teams from Bangalore and Mumbai are already on their way to Delhi to seek custody. Cops hope that the man, who allegedly played bomb-maker, recruiter and planner for the Indian Mujahideen, will provide vital clues about terror networks in India and their funding, about his outfit's links with the Lashkar e Taiba and how young men are recruited for terror.
Bhatkal, 30, was produced in court in Motihari in north Bihar on Thursday evening, his face covered with a black cloth and escorted by nearly 50 policemen and members of the National Investigating Agency or NIA in a bulletproof car.
He first said he had wrongly been identified, then accepted that he is Yasin Bhatkal. During questioning by the NIA, he reportedly appeared largely unfazed about the attacks he is accused of, and allegedly said, "Such things (bomb blasts) happen all the time...there's nothing new about this."
Yasin belongs to Karnataka; a statement issued by his family on Thursday said it is relieved that he has been arrested because "now the truth can come out" and said "he should be punished if he is guilty of any offence after the due process of law is followed." His father told NDTV he still hoped the man arrested in north Bihar is not his son Ahmad Sidibappa, who went missing from Dubai seven years ago. (Read)
In 2010, intelligence officials said that he was captured on security cameras wearing a golf cap and leaving behind a bag with a bomb that exploded minutes later at the German bakery in Pune, killing 17 people.
The Indian Mujahideen was banned after that attack.