Bengaluru police have arrested Chota Shakeel aide Syed Niyamat, and claimed that he was plotting the murders of prominent Sangh Parivar leaders in Karnataka.
Addressing the media in the city on Wednesday, Central Crime Branch Joint Commissioner M Chandrashekar said that Niyamat was planning to carry out his plans next week and that he had been in contact with Shakeel.
Niyamat has at least eight cases against him in various police stations in Bengaluru including Tilaknagar, Shivajinagar and Frazer Town police stations.
Niyamat’s arrest has added to the atmosphere of simmering tension that has prevailed in the state since the murder of Kannada writer MM Kalburgi in Dharwad district on August 30. In several instances across the state, violence of varying intensities has been carried out by various fundamentalist groups.
The latest suspected incident of communal violence occurred in the Mangaluru jail, where Chota Shakeel’s associate Madoor Yousuf was murdered on November 2. This murder itself comes on the heels of the murder of Bajrang Dal activist Prashant Poojary allegedly by activists of the Popular Front of India.
These murders have been dotted by other incidents of violence such as targeted attacks on young men and women associating with people belonging to different communities.