Ahmedabad blast suspects sent to 14-day police remand

The Ahmedabad Metropolitan Magistrate on Sunday sent all nine activists of banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), arrested on Saturday in connection with the July 26 Ahmedabad serial blast case, for a 14-day police remand.

Mufti Abu Bashir, the alleged mastermind of the bomb blast who was arrested from Ajamgarh, Uttar Pradesh, earlier brought to Gujarat for a three day remand and he will be produced before the court on Tuesday.

Gujarat police has claimed to have cracked the Ahmedabad serial blast case by arresting 10 members of the banned organisation SIMI. With these arrests, the state police have held them responsible for carrying out the recent serial bomb blasts in Ahmedabad, Bangalore and other cities in the country.

According to police, these persons are SIMI operators and were active in different parts of the country under a new banner- Indian Mujahideen. Police claimed that Bashir was the mastermind behind the serial who had attended a training camp in Kerala. And the camp was held by SIMI to give training on assembling explosives.

The other nine suspects named Jahid Sheikh, Yunus Mansuri, Shamsuddin Sheikh, Arif Kadri, Gyasuddin, Imran, Usman Agarbattiwala, Iqbal Sheikh and Sajid Mansuri- were arrested from different parts of Gujarat.

Earlier, the lawyers for these accused said that all charges against his clients are framed and they are innocent. He argued that police have shown arrests of all these people yesterday, but they were in police custody since July 31. So the court should not give further remand.

The Metropolitan Magistrate J K Pandya passed the remand order on the basis of several grounds: for further interrogation, to reach out a possible larger conspiracy and any further arrest.

It is to mention here that the July 26 serial blast in which as many as 22 bombs went off within a span of an hour, claimed 55 lives and left many injured.