'Bomb assembled elsewhere, given final touch near Church Street
Bengaluru: Dec 26, 2015, DHNS
That's all NIA is certain of after months of extensive probe
An extensive analysis of over two crore mobile call details, examination of thousands of hours of CCTV footage and about 4,000 manhours of investigation by 25 teams later, the police have still not been able to identify, leave alone apprehend, those who planned and carried out the bomb blast at Church Street here last year.
A woman from Chennai, Bhavani Devi, was killed and two others were injured in the blast that took place on a footpath near Coconut Grove restaurant around 8.30 pm on December 28, 2014.
A year after the blast, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) is still groping in the dark. Its officers admit that investigation by the NIA, the Bengaluru police and the Internal Security Division of the State police had led them nowhere.
The NIA took over the case in May 2015.
"It is one of those cases where there are no leads. The identity of the culprits and their motive have remained a mystery," a senior NIA officer told Deccan Herald. The only thing the investigators could ascertain was that the bomb was assembled elsewhere and the finishing touch given to it at a place close to Church Street. The culprits didn't transport the bomb for too long as the chances of its explosion midway were high, an officer involved in the investigation said.
The modus operandi was similar to the one used in a few past cases which, the police insist, was normally adopted by the proscribed Students' Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). But they have no evidence to link the case to SIMI. Two suspected SIMI operatives from Patna, Haider Ali, 28, and Umer Siddiqui, 37, were interrogated, but their link to the case could not be established, the officer added.
Police teams were sent to Jalandhar, Delhi, Chennai, Varanasi and Allahabad, some places in Bihar, Maharashtra, Kerala and every district of Karnataka to gather leads, but they returned empty-handed.
Soon after the blast, the Bengaluru police arrested a few youths from Bhatkal. But they too, had no role in the blast. The police dismissed the initial suspicion that the blast was carried out to avenge the arrest of Mehdi Masroor Biswas, the suspected Twitter handler of the Islamic State (IS), on December 13, 2014.
A woman from Chennai, Bhavani Devi, was killed and two others were injured in the blast that took place on a footpath near Coconut Grove restaurant around 8.30 pm on December 28, 2014.
A year after the blast, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) is still groping in the dark. Its officers admit that investigation by the NIA, the Bengaluru police and the Internal Security Division of the State police had led them nowhere.
The NIA took over the case in May 2015.
"It is one of those cases where there are no leads. The identity of the culprits and their motive have remained a mystery," a senior NIA officer told Deccan Herald. The only thing the investigators could ascertain was that the bomb was assembled elsewhere and the finishing touch given to it at a place close to Church Street. The culprits didn't transport the bomb for too long as the chances of its explosion midway were high, an officer involved in the investigation said.
The modus operandi was similar to the one used in a few past cases which, the police insist, was normally adopted by the proscribed Students' Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). But they have no evidence to link the case to SIMI. Two suspected SIMI operatives from Patna, Haider Ali, 28, and Umer Siddiqui, 37, were interrogated, but their link to the case could not be established, the officer added.
Police teams were sent to Jalandhar, Delhi, Chennai, Varanasi and Allahabad, some places in Bihar, Maharashtra, Kerala and every district of Karnataka to gather leads, but they returned empty-handed.
Soon after the blast, the Bengaluru police arrested a few youths from Bhatkal. But they too, had no role in the blast. The police dismissed the initial suspicion that the blast was carried out to avenge the arrest of Mehdi Masroor Biswas, the suspected Twitter handler of the Islamic State (IS), on December 13, 2014.
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