Bangalore cops check Al Qaeda angle

The Bangalore police, which is probing the city angle to the failed British terror plot, says it is now looking at an Al Qaeda link to the episode.

The city police are probing a possible Al Qaeda link after they received reports that Bilal Abdullah, the British-born, Iraq-raised doctor who was in the van that Bangalore native Kafeel Ahmed drove into Glasgow airport on June 30, had visited Pakistan and met some Al Qaeda leaders.

Among the CDs seized by the Bangalore police's cyber crime cell from Kafeel's home on Monday, July 9, were ones reportedly with Osama bin Laden's speeches and videos. The CDs, it is learnt, also contained several phone numbers and e-mail IDs, which the police is investigating.

Intelligence sources claim Kafeel also visited Pakistan more than once, but there is no independent confirmation of this information as yet.

The police are also checking if Kafeel was involved in the terrorist attack on the Indian Institute for Science, Bangalore, in December 2005.

Bangalore Police Commissioner N Achuth Rao said his officers are probing if there is any link between the latest British terror plot and the IISc attack.

Sources said Kafeel, who first traveled to Britain in 2001, returned to Bangalore in August 2005, four months before the IISc attack.

Police Commissioner Rao said nothing startling has been revealed as yet during the inquiries with Kafeel's family.