Jamshedpur, Feb. 6: The East Singhbhum district police have sent a team of cops to visit Delhi to bring two more suspected al-Qaida associates Abdul Rahman and Abdul Sami to the steel city for a face-to-face interrogation with all the three arrested radicals.
Senior superintendent of police Anoop T Mathew said they have submitted a petition requesting the court of first class judicial magistrate Kamal Ranjan to issue production warrants against both Katki and Sami, presently lodged in a Delhi jail.
The police have sent a production warrant to Tihar Jail authorities through a local court seeking transfer of arrested Al-Qaeda operative to the steel city. Sami was arrested by Delhi Police from Haryana and his interrogation had led to the arrest of two operatives of the terrorist organizations from Jamshedpur.
Mathew informed that the Jamshedpur police will move court to seek remand of the arrested terrorist once he is brought to the steel city.
Notably, Sami’s interrogation had led to the arrest of two more operatives – Ahmed Masood Akram Sheikh alias Masood and Raju alias Naseem Akhter – on January 25 from Dhatkidih and Mango, respectively. Masood had joined Al-Qaeda in 2003, while Akhter joined the terror organization some time later.
According to sources in the police, two police officers from Delhi Police (special cell) have come to the city and joined the district police in interrogating Masood at the Bistupur police station. Masood (38) has been kept under tight security and no outsider is allowed to enter into the room where he is being interrogated.
The sequence arrest of these suspected al-Qaida operatives from the city began after the arrest of the Cuttack-based cleric, Katki by a joint team of Delhi police and Odisha police in December. Following Katki’s arrest and the subsequent interrogation, Sami who is a resident of Dhatkidih in Bistupur was arrested by the Delhi police from a place in Haryana on January 16.
After the interrogation of Sami, two a member-team from Delhi police arrived at the steel city and investigated Sami’s background.
Following the investigation, anti- terrorist squad (ATS) Jharkhand took up the charge of the probe and nabbed Masood, also a resident of Dhatkidih and one Nasim Akhtar from Azadnagar in Mango on January 22.
They had also nabbed one Mohammed Billal (26), but they released him later after finding him innocent. The police on January 25 arrested both Masood and Nasim for being involved in al-Qaida and supplying fire-arms to the al-Qaida operatives respectively.