A fortnight after the hate campaign, allegedly laun-ched by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, triggered a mass exodus of northeasterners from Bengaluru, the city police cracked a huge network of sleeper cells of alleged terrorists owing allegiance to Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and Harkat-ul-Jihad-Al-Islami (HuJI).
In simultaneous raids in Bengaluru and Hubli, the central crime branch arrested 11 young men, including a journalist, a doctor and an engineer with a defence outfit, for alleged involvement in a conspiracy to kill some BJP leaders, politicians and pro-BJP journalists.
Karnataka police chief Lalrokhuma Pachau said the 11 had LeT and HuJI links. This was echoed by Bengaluru police commissioner Jyothi Prakash Mirji, who said the 11 suspects were acting at the behest of their handlers in Saudi Arabia.
“CCB sleuths were watching the movement of these suspects over the last few days after we got inputs from Central intelligence agencies. The arrests were made in Bengaluru and Hubli on Wednesday. The CCB sleuths recovered a foreign-made 7.65mm pistol with seven live rounds and other materials,” Mr Mirji said.
The arrests were on the basis of leads by four accused — Anees Pasha, Thaseen Nawaz, Shahid Salman Khan and Moosa, the alleged mastermind behind hate SMSes and circulation of doctored MMSes that set off the exodus by people from Northeast India.
Around 8.30 am Wednesday, in a clandestine operation, a CCB team picked up Matiur Rehman Siddiqui, 26, a journalist with an English newspaper; Riyaz, a BCA graduate and salesman; Yusuf, also a salesman; Ajaz, a software engineer at Defence Research and Develop-ment Organisation; and Shoaib, an MCA student, from their rented premises at Mubarak mohalla, Kempaiah block, J.C. Nagar.
Simultaneously, another CCB team arrested Imran Bahadduri, Dr Zakir Hussain Sheikh, Wahid Hussain Kanakannavar and Zafar Iqbal Sollapuri from Hubli in the sensitive Mumbai-Karnataka reg-ion.
n More on Page 4