NIA team spends 2 days in MP's Khandwa to track deadly SIMI fugitives

INDORE: Almost a year and half after six dreaded Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) escaped from Tantya Bheel Jail in Khandwa town of Madhya Pradesh, a National Investigation Agency (NIA) team from Kochi spent two days recently in Khandwa to track them.
Four-member NIA team led by a sub inspector spent entire Thursday and Friday in the sensitive MP town, collecting information about the five SIMI fugitives Zakir, Aizazuddin, Aslam, Amjad and Mehboob alias Guddu.The team particularly focused on elusive Mehboob alias Guddu, a resident of Ganesh Talai locality in Khandwa. Mehboob was burnt badly when a preparatory explosive device went off at the rented house in Bijnor district of West UP in September 2014.The five fugitives were staying on rent in disguised identity in Bijnor and have been on the run since that blast.
Along with Mehboob, his mother Nazma too has been missing since the Bijnor blast. She is believed to be nursing Mehboob’s burns and traveling with him from one hideout to another in Maharashtra, Karnataka and other parts of south India.
The NIA team spent considerable time in knowing about Mehboob’s sympathizers in MP and outside. The NIA team also visited Khandwa jail from where the six SIMI men led by their leader Abu Faisal alias Doctor, had escaped on October 1, 2013 early morning, key sources in Khandwa police confided to TOI.
Faisal, however, was arrested in December 2013 in Sendhwa town of Barwani district.
According to sources, the NIA team from Kerala is believed to have gathered inputs about Mehboob as he was among the SIMI men, who attended a terror camp in Wagamon in Ernakulam, Kerala in December 2007. He along with Abu Faisal (who is married to a girl from Khandwa) is also among the 2008 Ahmedabad serial blasts accused.
Role of Mehboob and his men is also suspected in a host of other recent terror incidents in south and west India, including February 1, 2014 bank robbery in Karimnagar-Telengana, blast on a Bangalore-Guwahati train at the Chennai Central Station in May 2014, blast outside a restaurant in Bengaluru’s Chruch Street area in December 2014 and the blast in the parking lot of Faraskhana and Vishrambag police stations also during 2014.