Blasts: SIMI activist held in Bengaluru

The common link between serial blasts in Bangalore and Ahmedabad have started to get closer with the Gujarat police picking up a key person identified as Sajid Ghulam Khwaja Mansuri, an activist of the outlawed Students Islamic Movement of India.

A team of the Gujarat police have reached Belgaum in Karnataka and will interrogate Tanvir Mulla, another SIMI activist who was arrested in Karnataka recently.

Based on the inputs provided by the Intelligence Bureau, the investigating agencies believe that both Mulla and Mansuri shared close ties and had even discussed the serial blasts.

An investigating officer in Karnataka told rediff.com that the statements of both Mulla and Mansuri would be crucial to the investigation as they believe that the duo had knowledge of the blasts.

The IB said Mansuri would be crucial to the investigation as he had knowledge of the Bangalore, Ahmedabad and the Jaipur blasts.

Mansuri, 35, was working as a recovery agent was the zonal secretary of SIMI in Gujarat. The IB says that he also taught at a madrassa and also held meetings under the banner of the All-India Muslim Education Board.

Mansuri is also alleged to have held several meetings at Gujarat and Rajasthan in which the main focus was to indoctrinate youth into the banned outfit. He is also said to have kept in touch with Tanvir Mulla in Belgaum and the suspicion that the two could have jointly planned the blasts in their respective states.

The IB says that the blasts were planned by Rasool Khan Parti and Amhed Patangiya in Pakistan, following which a series of meetings were held in India to finalise the operation. The IB says that one of the meetings in India was also attended by Parti's brother Abdul Latif, an underworld don who at present is absconding.