The National Investigative Agency together with the Tamil Nadu police and the Telangana police have arrested three persons from Madurai and detained another in connection with bomb blasts in court complexes across South India.
In a statement released to the press, the NIA said, "During sustained examination, they have confessed their involvement in these blasts."
The three persons have been identified as Abbas Ali (27), who is painter from Madurai, Suleiman (23), who works at a software firm in Chennai and Samsum Karim Raja, a BCom graduate who runs a chicken broiler shop in Madurai. The NIA claimed that Suleiman is the "main leader of the terrorist gang." The agency has also detained Md. Ayub Ali (25), a public liason officer in Madurai.
The NIA has seized mobile phones, and hard discs in their possesion. The three men will be produced before courts in Chennai and Madurai for seeking transit remand, so that the NIA may take them to the NIA Court in Bengaluru, where the Mysuru blast case is registered.
The NIA suspect that they are part of the Base Movement, a mysterious organisation under investigation for blasts in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala. On November 1, a low-intensity blast took place at Kerala’s Malappuram District Collectorate. At the time, the Kerala police found a letter warning of more attacks, along with the photograph of the deceased leader of the Al-Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden at the blast site. The typewritten letter affixed with a map of India stated, “On September 28, Mohammed Akhlaq was killed by terrorist of India for eating beef.”
The Base Movement has also claimed responsibility for bombings in Mysuru, Chittoor, Kollam and Nellore.
An Indian Express report in August 2016 had said that investigators believe the proscribed Tamil Nadu terror outfit Al Ummah and the Indian wing of the Al Qaeda had realigned themselves as the Base Movement.
In August 2014, Al Qaeda leader Ayman Al Zawahiri had announced the launch of Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) or "Jamaat Qaidat al-jihad fi’shibhi al-qarrat al-Hindiya".