Two al Qaeda suspects, Abdul Sami and Abdul Rahman alias Katki who were brought to the city on transit remand from Tihar Central Jail in Delhi on Monday night, were produced before the court of chief judicial magistrate, GK Tiwary this morning.
Both Sami (32) and Rahman (37) are wanted in connection with a case under Unlawful Activities Prevention Act registered with the Bistupur police station on January 25.
After hearing, the court of Tiwary granted a petition filed by the Bistupur police for taking the two al Qaeda suspects in seven days’ police remand for interrogating them.
Senior superintendent of police, Anoop T Mathew said that they have taken the two al Qaeda suspects for seven day police remand for interrogation. He said if they want to generate more information they would pray the court for extending the remand period.
“As per our plans we expect team of various Intelligence agencies from the State and also other States, including Odisha Delhi, and Maharastra to probe the suspects.
“We will try to find out if there are any more al Qaeda suspects in the steel city or any other part of the State. We will also try to know if Sami, Katki and another suspect Masood Ahmed who is presently lodged in Ghaghidih Central Jail, had been to Pakistan for undergoing arms training. We will do cross-interrogation of the two suspects so that they can divulge information on network of this terrorist outfit here in steel city,”said Mathew.
The senior SP said that they would file a petition for the police remand of Masood after an initial interrogation of Sami and Katki.
Sami is Mohammed Abdul Sattar’s third son among four. The rest of Sattar’s three sons- Rashid, Syeed and Rahman- are in Gulf countries where they are employed in different companies. A former Tata Steel employee, Sattar used to stay at the company’s quarter in Sakchi till his retirement in 2011.
Then they shifted to Rajak Colony in Dhatkidih where they stayed at a rented house before shifting to AK Residency two years ago.
Notably, the al Qaeda’s Jamshedpur link was established after a team of Delhi police had arrested Katki from Cuttack in Odisha in December last. On the revelation made by Katki, the Delhi police arrested Sami from a place in Haryana on December 18 for link with al Qaeda. As Sami is a resident of Dhatkidih in Bistupur, a team of Delhi police came here for investigation and during two-day investigation picked up Masood, also a resident of Dhatkidih for keeping link with the al Qaeda. The police had also arrested another man, Nasim Akhtar (40) for supplying arms and ammunition to the al Qaida operatives in Bangalore.
During the interrogation, Masood had confessed that he was involved with the terrorist outfit since the year 2003 after coming in contact with Katki in Jamshedpur in the year 2003, and that he was the person who had motivated Sami to join the terrorist outfit in the year 2011. The police had also recovered a pistol from the house of Masood at Dhatkidih in Bistupur.