Date:22/09/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/09/22/stories/2007092258700100.htm

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Breakthrough in blasts case: ‘HuJi activist’ Ridwan Gazi arrested

Staff Reporter

14 more ‘Bangladeshis’ picked up by Task Force from Secunderabad station

Gazi illegally entered India in 2003
Denies involvement in terrorist plots

— PHOTO: P. V. Sivakumar

In the net: Bangladeshi national Ridwan Gazi being brought to the Criminal Courts in Hyderabad on Friday.

HYDERABAD: Bangladeshi Ridwan Gazi, for whom the Hyderabad police had been searching high and low, for the past three weeks in connection with the twin blasts, was finally arrested here on Friday.

In a related development, Commissioner’s Task Force officials picked up 14 others, all believed to be Bangladeshis, from Secunderabad railway station while they were moving under suspicious circumstances late in the evening. “They’re denying involvement in any illegal activity, but are being questioned,” Task Force DCP B. Kamalasan Reddy said.

City police claimed that Gazi (19) turned out to be an activist of Harkat-ul-Jehadi Islami (HuJI), which is believed to be behind the twin blasts, and provided shelter to his accomplice Musliuddin, also a Bangladeshi. In his confessional statement, copy of which is available with The Hindu, the teenager stated that he had tried to garner support for and spread Jehadi activities. He said Musliuddin funded him to buy a motorcycle and he used to visit madarsas and minority colleges to lure Muslim youth to Jehadi activities. He admitted that, at the instance of Musliuddin, he had procured petrol to prepare petrol bombs and also provided shelter to Musliuddin’s friend Khaleel, another Bangladeshi.

Hailing from Chittagong of Bangladesh, Gazi illegally entered India in 2003 and lived with his uncle for some time in West Bengal before joining a madarsa in Uttar Pradesh next year. Later, he came to Hyderabad and joined the madarsa at Kishanbagh in old city. After discontinuing the studies there, he shifted to a rented house in the same locality when he came in contact with Musliuddin.

All these years, his father Joynal Abedin, younger brother Irfan Gazi and elder sister Shahi Rafsanjani, used to come to Hyderabad to meet him. Rafsanjani, who is pursuing degree course at Vellore in Tamil Nadu, had already been arrested when she came to the city to meet Gazi a few days after the twin blasts.

‘I am innocent’

Speaking to media persons outside the court, Gazi, however, denied involvement in terrorist plots. “I am innocent and have nothing to do with the twin blasts or any other terrorist activities,” he maintained.