Hyderabad: Investigations by the Telangana police have found terror links to around eight bank robberies in the country inclu-ding that of Choppadandi in Karimnagar.
Four SIMI activists, who broke out of the Khandwa jail, are suspected to be involved in the '46 lakh robbery case of SBI where cash was looted at gunpoint on February 1, 2014.
Police said that CCTV images of suspects matc-hed with that of the fugitives. The suspects’ image also matched with that of Uttar Pradesh’s Bijnor blast hospital footage when one of the suspects was injured in their den while making Improvised Explosive Devices (IED).
Karimnagar police, who had shown the CCTV images of Choppadandi bank robbery to the Madhya Pradesh police a few months ago, got confirmation that the fugitives were the same as those in the footage.
Peddapalli DSP P. Venugopal Rao said, “On February 1, 2014, a four-member gang with short weapons entered the bank and at gunpoint threatened the manager and other employees and robbed the cash. Initially we didn’t think of the terror angle and the weapons were also suspected to be dummy. Though they took away the CCTV modem, we retrieved the footage and the MP police that they were SIMI activists.”
The NIA and the Telangana state police have denied any link of bank robberies to the Burdwan blast case at this point of time.
An NIA official from Delhi said, “At this point of time there are no clues linking the Burdwan blast to the Choppadandi bank robbery. It is speculative. In future we don’t know where it will lead. But the last information we had was that the Karimnagar robbery was the handiwork of SIMI operatives who escaped from Khandwa jail.”
Karimnagar Superintendent of Police V. Shiva Kumar said, “Burdwan blast was done by the Bangladeshi group Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen. Regarding the SBI robbery, it is suspected to be that of four members of the SIMI module. Abu Faisal alias Doctor, a key member, was said to have been arrested in December 2013 and his role is unlikely and other members of the gang are suspected.”
The Burdwan blast case pertains to an explosion at a rented house at Khagragarh in Burdwan town on October 2 in which two men, believed to be members of Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh, died. The case is being investigated by the NIA’s Kolkata branch.
Peddapalli DSP P. Venugopal Rao said the four SIMI activists, who broke out of the Khandwa jail were involved in eight offences in the country including Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar. “In Bijnor, when they were manufacturing IEDs, one of them exploded accidentally. They took the injured, identified as Mehboob alias Guddu, to a hospital where they were caught on CCTV and the footage matched with that of our images of the suspects,” Mr Rao said.
Police suspected that the accused had local help in Karimnagar and also conducted reconnaissance.
As Abu Faisal Khan alias Doctor 30 of Mumbai was arrested in December 2013, police are suspecting Shaik Mehboob alias Guddu (25), Amjad alias Daud (25), Mohammed Aslam alias Bilal (26) and Zakir Hussain alias Sadiq (32), all residents of Ganesh Talai in Khandwa, and Mohammed Aijajudden (30) a resident of Narsingh Ward Kareli in Narsinghpur.
