The Kerala and Karnataka police forces have received enough evidence to assume that some of the activists of the Islamist outfit, Popular Front of India (PFI) arrested on April 23 from a secret training camp at Narath, Kannur, could have been involved in the recent blast outside the BJP office in Bangalore.
Abdul Aziz of Mattannur and Kamaruddin of Kannur, chief trainers at the camp from where several weapons, bombs and incriminating documents were seized in the raid last week, could have been involved in the Bangalore blast, according to sources.
The police had arrested 21 PFI men undergoing training at the facility in the raid. Aziz was arrested later.
A special team of the Karnataka Police’s anti-terror squad probing the blast held inspections at the PFI facility at Narath on Sunday. A Kerala Police team, headed by P Sukumaran, Deputy Superintendent of Police in charge of the case pertaining to the Narath raid, assisted the four-member Karnataka Police team in the inspections.
The Kerala Police had got indications of the alleged involvement of the PFI men in the Bangalore blast during the search conducted at the house of Kamaruddin, who was absconding after he escaped from the camp during the police raid. The Karnataka Police officials reached Kannur on the basis of information provided by the Kerala police.
The raid at the training facility at a building of a PFI-linked social service organisation had yielded several weapons like swords, two country bombs, bomb-making materials, a human dummy used for target-practising, an Iranian identification document and several documents related to the PFI and its political wing SDPI.
The police are considering approaching the Interpol to find out the nature of connection of the PFI men with West Asia in the context of the presence of an Iranian identity card at the camp. The Karnataka Police have asked their Kerala counterparts for the entire details of their findings in the investigations so far.
The Kerala Police team probing the case had also unearthed printed lists of the explosions that had occurred in various parts of India in the past 15 years, the responsibility of which had been slapped on Hindu organisations. The documents had also contained the allegation that Muslims in the country were facing persecution.
Investigators believe that these lists were being distributed to the participants in the training camp for whipping up Jihadi sentiment and thus inciting them into terror acts.
The documents had also contained details of explosions that had occurred in various places in the Malabar region, according to police sources.
They said preliminary enquiries had indicated that the training camp and its participants had been receiving foreign assistance in the form of funds. Details of such connections would come out in the analysis of the ATM cards and mobile SIM cards confiscated from them, they said, adding that more people could be arrested in the coming days in connection with the training camp.