Hours After Annamalai Presser, UAPA Slapped Against Coimbatore Car Bomb Suspects

The Coimbatore City Police has invoked the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) against the five people arrested in connection with the car blast case.

The accused have been identified as Mohammad Dhalha, Mohammad Azharudheen, Mohammad Riyaz, Feroz Ismail and Mohammad Nawaz Ismail. All of them hail from Coimbatore.

City Police Commissioner V Balakrishnan said that while the police had earlier registered a case under Sections 174 of CrPC and Section 3A of Explosive Substances Act, based on the evidence gathered, they had now changed the sections to Section 120 B (criminal conspiracy) and 153 A (promoting enmity between two different groups) in addition to invoking the UAPA. The accused will be in judicial custody.

He said that the police is investigating close to 20 people in connection with the case.

Regarding the role of the five arrested accused, Balakrishnan said that while Riyaz, Nawaz and Feroz helped the deceased Jameesha Mubeen to shift the explosives such as cylinders, the others were coordinating it.

The raids on Mubeen’s home, have so far yielded around 75kg of explosive items like potassium nitrate, aluminium powder, charcoal and suplhur.

Responding to questions on other items seized in the case, he said that the police found that the accused were carrying two LPG cylinders and three drums but they cannot confirm the contents of the drums till the arrival of the forensic report.

Mubeen had been questioned by the National Investigative Agency (NIA) in 2019 for links to ISIS and thus was already on a list of suspected terrorists.

Initial probes have found that Mubeen was linked to Mohammed Azharuddin who is in a Kerala jail for propagating ISIS ideology through a Facebook page, KhilafahGFX and that both of them followed Zahran Hashim, the Sri Lankan suicide bomber who carried out the Easter Day blasts in 2019.

These revelations by the police come after yesterday’s press meet by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) state president K Annamalai.

In the press meeting, Annamalai had said that the police has not revealed the information regarding the huge amount of explosives recovered and the sections invoked against the five people who were arrested in the case.

Annamalai had also asked Chief Minister MK Stalin to accept the failure of the Intelligence Department and to acknowledge that it was a terror attack.

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