ATS wants DNA sample from Saudi for confirmation

Beed resident and Lashkar operative Fayaz Kagzi, who was suspected of launching the fidayeen attack on the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina in July, has prompted the state’s counter-terrorism agency to seek a DNA sample of the suicide bomber from Saudi.

The Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) has written to the state home department with a request to get in touch with Saudi Arabia for the forensic evidence. A month ago, the agency had said it suspected that the attacker might be Kagzi.

Mirror on August 11 had reported the ATS’s contention, which was on the basis that the picture of the suicide bomber released by Saudi authorities had far too many similarities with that of Kagzi. The attack at the pilgrim site left four security guards dead.

“We need a confirmation. If the Saudi authorities provide us with a DNA sample of the fidayeen attacker, who we suspect was Fayaz Kagzi, then we will drop his name from the cases where he has been named as an accused,” said a senior ATS officer.

The officer said they have approached the home department to send a Letter of Rogatory, a formal request from a court to a foreign court for judicial assistance, to Saudi Arabia. If successful in getting the sample, ATS will match it with his family members in Beed.

Saudi intelligence agencies have identified the Medina suicide attacker as 34-year-old Pakistani national Abdullah Qalzar Khan. “Both the photographs are similar. We have alerted the official channels to get a confirmation,” said ATS chief Atul Chand Kulkarni.

If the ATS’s suspicion comes true, it will be established that Kagzi fled to Pakistan from India in 2006 via Bangladesh to join terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba. This will also achieve the larger purpose of proving Pakistan’s complicity in fomenting terrorism.

According to Indian intelligence agencies Kagzi, who lived in Saudi Arabia since 2009, worked with Zabiuddin Ansari, alias Abu Jundal, an alleged 26/11 mastermind who is serving a life sentence after his conviction in the Aurangabad arms haul case. ATS says Kagzi and Jundal recruited terrorists from India.

Kagzi was instrumental in the 2008 Mumbai terror strike. He is currently on the CBI’s wanted list for terror offences. Originally from Feroz Shah Nagar near Aqsa mosque in Beed district, Kagzi fled to Pakistan after the Aurangabad arms haul – a conspiracy to procure arms and explosives to target political leaders to avenge Gujarat riots. He later moved to Saudi and took charge of recruiting Indian youths for Lashkar.

Jundal had also told investigators that he and Kagzi had met Himayat Mirza Baig, another Beed man who was behind the 2010 German Bakery blasts in Pune, in Colombo in 2008 and gave him money to facilitate passage of radicalised Indian youths to terror camps in Pakistan.