NIA clean chit to man held for ‘plotting Modi rally blasts’

NEW DELHI: Indian Mujahideen’s top commander Tehsin Akhtar alias Monu, who was earlier suspected to be the mastermind of blasts at a Narendra Modi rally in Patna last year and is listed as prime accused in the FIR filed by Patna police in the case, has been absolved by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) of complicity in the terror attack that left 5 BJP workers dead and scores of others injured.
The agency on Friday filed a supplementary chargesheet in the case against key accused Haidar Ali of banned Students’ Islamic Movement in India( SIMI) and nine others. It conspicuously left out Tehsin Akhtar and Tabish Niyaz alias Arshad Ansari from Motihari (Bihar). A total of 12 people had been arrested in the case by NIA apart from Imtiyaz Ansari, arrested by Patna police from city railway station on the day of the blasts.
Akhtar, who has close links with Haidar, was mentioned as prime accused in the FIR filed by Patna police based on a photograph that Imtiyaz had identified as that of Akhtar’s, whom he knew only as Menon. Niyaz was arrested by NIA in October, 2013, on the suspicion of having helped the group led by Haidar Ali.

“Following detailed investigations we did not find any evidence to link the two to Patna blasts. So we have left them out in the chargesheet. Interrogations of Haidar Ali and other accused too did not indicate their direct involvement in the blasts. It is our policy not to chargesheet people unless there is prosecutable evidence against the accused,” said NIA officer.
Akhtar however, remains accused of various blasts in the country including those in Mumbai and Hyderabad.
Earlier NIA has given clean chit to a DRDO scientist and a journalist arrested by Bangalore police in connection with a Saudi-Arabia linked LeT terror module busted in 2012.
The chargesheet has blamed the Jharkhand-based SIMI module headed by Haidar Ali to be behind the blasts. It has concluded that Modi became the group’s target as it believed his becoming PM would be “inimical” to the interest of Muslims. It also says that it targeted his rally as it was unable to reach him given his security. It hoped that the chaos that would ensue after the blasts would give them a window to reach and target Modi.
Ali and his associates had conducted reconnaissance of various rallies to take stock of the security arrangements and plan for attacks, says the chargesheet.
“After realising that it was not possible to reach Modi during such rallies due to stringent security arrangements, the accused Ali and other co-conspirators decided to trigger bomb blasts at one such public rally which would result in a stampede and in the ensuing melee and chaos, they could reach to Modi,” the chargesheet says.
NIA has said the accused had collected explosives from Mirzapur and other material from Patna to fabricate improvised explosive devices (IEDs) at Iram Lodge and Sithio village in Ranchi.
Ali, who along with some other Patna blasts accused also allegedly planted bombs at Bodh Gaya last year, had given up the idea of planting cylinder bombs as they were not that effective. After learning how to make bombs from “Inspire” magazine of banned terror group Al-Qaeda, they fabricated IEDs in pipe-elbow style, the chargesheet says.
The other accused in the chargesheet have been identified as Numan Ansari, Mujibullah Ansari, Umer Siddique, Azharuddin Qureshi, Ahmad Hussain, Fakkruddin, Firoz Aslam, Iftheqar Alam and a juvenile. After the blasts, Qureshi had planned to flee to Afghanistan via Pakistan but was arrested.
According to the NIA, Ali and his associates were had been motivating and recruiting young boys from Ranchi and other places by showing them Jehadi videos. They also had places such as Guwahati, Jaipur, Qadian (Punjab) and Ajmer on their target, the chargesheet says. As many as six people were killed and 89 injured in the Patna blasts.
This is the second chargesheet filed by NIA in this case. NIA had filed the first charge sheet in April this year against Imtiyaz Ansari, who was caught by people when they were attempting to detonate a bomb inside a makeshift toilet near Patna railway station.