City police bust terror ‘sleeper cell’; 11 held

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A fortnight after the hate campaign, allegedly launched by Pakistan’s ISI, which triggered the mass exodus of North Easterners from Bengaluru, the Central Crime Branch of the City police cracked a huge network of sleeper cells, who owe allegiance to proscribed terror outfits — Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) and Harkat-ul-Jihad-Al- Islami (HuJI).

In simultaneous operations in Bengaluru and Hubli, they arrested 11 men including a journalist, a doctor and an engineer with a defence organization for their alleged involvement in a conspiracy to eliminate some top BJP leaders, politicians and pro-BJP journalists. State Police Chief Lalrokhuma Pachau said that the 11 arrested have links with banned Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and HuJI terror groups. City Police Commissioner Jyothi Prakash Mirji said the 11 suspects were acting at the behest of handlers in Saudi Arabia.

“CCB sleuths have been watching the movements of these suspects over the last few days, after we received inputs from central intelligence agencies. The arrests were made at Bengaluru and Hubli by the CCB sleuths on Wednesday. The CCB sleuths have recovered a foreign made 7.65mm pistol along with seven live rounds and other materials,” Mirji said.

HOW IT WAS DONE
The arrests were made on the basis of the leads given by four accused in the hate SMS campaign — Anees Pasha, Thaseen Nawaz, Shahid Salman Khan and Moosa, the alleged mastermind — that set off the mass exodus by the panicked NE community.

At around 8.30am on Wednesday morning, in a clandestine operation, a team of CCB officials, picked up Matiur Rehman Siddiqui (26), a journalist with a prominent English news daily, Riyaz, a BCA graduate and salesman, Yusuf, also a salesman, Ajaz, a software engineer at the Defence Research & Development Organisation, and Shoaib, an MCA student from their rented premises at Mubarak Mohalla, Kempaiah Block, JC Nagar in the city. Simultaneously, another team of CCB officials led by inspector N.B. Sakri arrested Imran Bahadduri, Dr Zakir Hussain Sheikh, Wahid Hussain Kanakannavar, and Zafar Iqbal Sollapuri from Hubli in the sensitive Bombay-Karnataka region on Wednesday.

Target: Pro-Hindutva Journos
According to sources, Siddiqui had allegedly planned to take the help of another accused, Akram alias Chotu, of Bengaluru to eliminate a “pro-Hindutva” editor and columnist of a Kannada news daily.

Media being infiltrated
Asenior police officer told Deccan Chronicle that four years ago, when police busted sleeper cells funded and operated by banned terrorist organisations in Hubli, those arrested had hinted at attempts to infiltrate media houses.