NIA court remands five blast suspects in police custody

The Special Court for National Investigation Agency (NIA) cases on Wednesday remanded five suspects, belonging to an outfit ‘Base Movement’ in 10-day police custody.

The suspects were arrested in connection with five blasts outside courts in South India, including in Mysuru on August 1. In a joint operation, NIA, along with Tamil Nadu and Telangana police, had arrested the accused Abbas Ali, 27; Dawood Suleiman, 23; Samsum Karim Raja, 27; Mohammed Ayub Ali, 25 and Shamsudeen, 25, for their involvement in the series of blasts.

The suspects were produced before the NIA court in Bengaluru as the cases were handed over to the agency after the Mysuru blast and it later turned out that all the five blasts were carried out by the same outfit.

The NIA moved an application seeking the custodial interrogation of the accused in connection with the blasts. The NIA court remanded them in police custody till December 9 and also granted permission to take the accused to the cities where the blasts had taken place.

A source said that Abbas Ali had created the Base Movement and recruited others in January 2015. He had also administered them oral oath of allegiance under the group that he named as the ‘Base Movement’.  In 2015, they limited their activities to sending letters to various jails and other district authorities citing grievances against the jail administration.

According to sources, Dawood Suleiman, a techie working in a software company in Chennai, was involved in planting of the device in all the five blasts. When produced before the magistrate, Suleiman pleaded the judge that he was running a high fever.

After the case was handed over to the NIA, it was found that the responsibility of the blasts was claimed by ‘The Base Movement’ through propaganda materials circulated by way of pen drives and pamphlets. These materials were left behind at the crime scenes at Nellore and Malapuram court premises. All the five accused hailed from Madurai and were known to each other for a long time. Abbas runs a small library and was deeply influenced by ideology of Al-Qaeda. The prime movers of the group were Abbas and Dawood, the sources said.

A preliminary probe has revealed that Abbas and Shamsudeen made the bombs, Dawood drafted the electronic propaganda in pen drives which were left behind at crime scenes. The posters that were left behind at the crime scene were printed in the press owned by Karim. The bombs were finally placed at all the five court complexes by Karim and Dawood.