Yasin Bhatkal, accused of being part of the Indian Mujahideen, is now in custody, but does the group face an uncertain future, or does it still hold lethal potential?
The origins of Ahmed Yasin Siddibappa, the man we know as Yasin Bhatkal, is in a prosperous enclave along the Mangalore coast at Bhatkal. At the family home, Yasin's father told us a familiar narrative of confusion and denial, that their son would do no wrong.
The school Yasin went to, run by the Anjuman Trust, is the legacy of progressive educational institutions of Bhatkal.
But Bhatkal, for all its progressive nature, and prosperity, is no stranger to communal tension that had swept the country. The Mangalore coast was one of the earliest points of entry for the BJP into the South, sparking a wave of violence.
Bhatkal witnessed deadly riots in 1993, in the aftermath of the Babri demolition in which 20 were killed followed by the killing of two BJP politicians in 1996 and 2004.
Through those turbulent years, as Yasin was coming of age, a parallel radicalism was taking effect amongst the Muslim community, with the growing influence of the ultra-conservative sect, the Tabhlighi Jamaat, drawing young men like him.
His father says that he called Yasin to Dubai, to work with him, but Yasin wanted to start a sports shop, over which they had an argument. After which they claim Yasin dropped out of sight.
The answers to those lost years could lie not far away from Yasin's home, in the home of Riyaz and Iqbal Bhatkal, accused of being founders of Indian Mujahideen, under whom Yasin would eventually serve - and who intelligence agencies claim are in Pakistan.
But their parents, too, claim innocence, saying their sons didn't even know Yasin.
It is true that Iqbal and Riyaz grew up in Mumbai in Kurla, where their father had set up a small business.
The parents say after their degrees, they returned to work in and around Mangalore.
But when asked about where their sons have been for the past five years, the family has no clear answers.
But investigating agencies say they have a fairly clear idea what the young men from Bhatkal were upto during the lost years, mainly after the arrest in 2008 of someone who lived near them in Mumbai, and who admitted to being part of the core team of the group that would evolve into the Indian Mujahideen.
That man is Sadiq Sheikh, a native of Azamgarh was living in the Cheetah Camp slum, abutting Kurla.
Sadiq claims he met Riyaz and Iqbal at SIMI gatherings in early 2000, just before the organisation was banned for adopting a violent path.
Sadiq was already on a violent path. He owned upto plotting, along with Amir Raza Khan, the Calcutta based criminal and Jihadist, the attack on the American Embassy in Calcutta in 2002.
He's also admitted to his role in the Shramjeevi train blasts in 2005, for which he claimed he was assisted by Atif Amin, another Azamgarh based native, killed in the Batla House encounter.
And Sadiq also admitted to one of the most devastating terrorist strikes in India's history - Mumbai serial train blasts of 2006.
When I met Sadiq recently, as he was being taken back to prison after a court hearing, he says he has retracted his admissions, saying they have been forced from him but police say subsequent events bore out what he told them.
The meeting of Sadiq and the Bhatkals would form the nucleus of the Indian Mujahideen.
Amir Raza Khan, from Kolkata, who had escaped to Karachi, would supply funds and instructions. Riyaz and Iqbal Bhatkal, along with their lieutenant Yasin, would provide explosives from sand quarrying mines of Bhatkal.
Sadiq recruited young men from Azamgarh, amongst whom their main bomb maker, Arif Badr and the rising force in the group Atif Amin.
According to Sadiq's confession, the name Indian Mujahideen was decided at a meeting between him, the Bhatkals and Atif, at a McDonalds in the Mumbai suburb of Andheri, part of a strategy for an even more spectacular series of attacks, with emails prior to each blast.
The first of those emails signalling the Indian Mujahideen arrived two days after the Jaipur blasts, followed by blasts in Ahmedabad, Hyderabad and Delhi.
The attacks may have brought the higher profile the group intended, but it would also prove to be their undoing. A week after the Delhi blasts, both the Mumbai and Delhi police had breakthroughs. In Mumbai, more than 20 arrests made of key members of the Indian Mujahideen. In Delhi, the Batla House encounter had fatal consequences for Atif Amin, another alleged co-founder of the Indian Mujahideen.
During that wave of arrests, Iqbal, Riyaz and Yasin are believed to have fled to Karnataka. Based on leads from other arrests, a team from Mumbai police raided their hideouts, at Ullal, about 10 km from Mangalore. But the local police, not wanting to risk a communal provocation, had arrived with a huge presence, including the media. This alerted them and they could slip away.
The Bhatkals are believed to have travelled to Delhi onwards to Darbhanga in Bihar, and into Nepal, from where Iqbal and Riyaz fled to Pakistan.
Yasin, investigators say, stayed back in Darbhanga, signalling a new chapter in the Indian Mujahideen story. Here, he is alleged to have recruited local youth for fresh wave of blasts.
Yasin's first major strike on his own was the German Bakery blasts in 2010 after two years of silence of the Indian Mujahideen.
In a rare instance of luck for investigators, he was identified in the CCTV footage.
Despite this, he would figure as the main accused in the Bangalore blasts, also in the same year, bombs that went off two hours before an IPL match in Chinnaswamy stadium.
The Bombay serial blasts in 2011, was also, according to the Maharashtra police, the handiwork of Yasin Bhatkal.
By late 2011, the investigating agencies claimed they were alerted to the Indian Mujahideen's Bihar connection, making a series of arrests from in and around, the Darbhanga region.
Despite these setbacks to his group, Yasin, it is believed carried out the twin blasts in Hyderabad's Dilsukhnagar as recently as February this year, an indication that the Indian Mujahideen might still have active recruits.
And it is to trace them, that the NIA have been conducting raids. Looking, amongst others, for those like Tehseen Akhtar, a young man from Darbhanga, they believe has succeeded Yasin, and who like Yasin has a Rs.10 lakh bounty on his head. His distraught father says that his son has been missing for 2 years, and is innocent.
While the arrest of Yasin Bhatkal could lead to fresh arrests, as investigators try to crack down on the Indian Mujahideen network it has also intensified the demands for justice of those who believe they are being blamed for blasts carried out by Yasin.
Like Himayat Baig who has been convicted for his role in the German Bakery blasts.
The evidence on the basis of which Himayat was convicted had raised serious questions. He was arrested, standing at a bus stop in Pune, by the ATS, who claimed he was a Lashkar trained operative. The ATS took him to his house the same day and miraculously found RDX at his house. Now with Yasin Bhatkal's arrest, Himayat's lawyers hope he will get justice.
There is an even older backlog of accused, who say they have been wrongly blamed for crimes committed by the Indian Mujahideen.
Indian Mujahideen founder Sadiq Sheikh's confession - that he carried out the train blasts - has raised serious questions over the men arrested by the Maharashtra ATS for the same attack.
And while Yasin's arrest may be crucial in cracking down on the Indian Mujahideen's networks, equally crucial is to ensure that those wrongly accused of the same crime are given justice.