A 25-year-old Jharkhand-based male suspect was detained by a joint team of Karnataka and Jharkhand police for having alleged links with terror and Naxal groups from Ramanagara district near Bengaluru on Monday.
Muneer Sheik who has been arrested had allegedly escaped from the Bangladeshi police by attacking them while in custody. "He is suspected to the person who supplied the IED for the Bodhgaya blast," sources said.
Sources in the National Investigation Agency (NIA), the country’s premier anti-terror body, on Monday afternoon had told TNM that they are yet to get custody of the suspect.
However, later in the day it was confirmed that Muneer was not a naxal but a suspected terrorist, who is a member of Jammat ul Mujahideen.
Sources said that two more persons were arrested by NIA from Bengali colony in Malappuram Kerala - Abdul Karim and Mustafizur Rehman.
A source said, “This was a joint operation by the Jharkhand Police and Ramanagara Police. His links with other extremist groups are being identified and he is currently being quizzed.”
An official statement on his detention is awaited. Ramanagara Town Police denied information on the arrest except that they were assisting the other agency.
An official from the state intelligence told TNM that the suspect has been identified as Muneer and was selling clothes door-to-door on his bike for the past seven months.
He had arrived in Ramanagara Town seven months ago. Officials of the Intelligence Bureau, Jharkhand Police and the NIA were keeping a check on Muneer for the past couple of days.
“After tracking his movements for the last two days, officials raided his house and nabbed him. The joint-team suspects that he has links with the Naxal leadership in Jharkhand,” a source in the state intelligence, said.
Recently in June, Vikalp aka Abhay Devdas, a Bengaluru-based alleged Maoist leader, who according to police was Information Technology (IT) Cell chief and spokesman of outlawed CPI (Maoist) was arrested in Chhattisgarh.
In January, 2016 the NIA arrested six terror suspects from across Karnataka including Bengaluru.