His wife Sufiya, a defendant in a bus burning case in Kerala whom the Bangalore police grilled last week, has not been arrayed in the case as has been widely speculated. The key accused in the case Thadiyanavide Naseer is identified close to the Ma’danis.

Police say Ma’dani’s former associates planted low-intensity bombs at the instance of Lashkar-e-Taiba at eight different places in the booming southern city that accounts for 34 percent of India’s software exports. According to them, Ma’dani knew about their plans but did nothing to prevent them.

Ma’dani, who lost his right leg in an attempt on his life a few years back, is staying in an orphanage that he established in his hometown of Karunagappally where workers of his People’s Democratic Party (PDP) have gathered in large numbers vowing to protect their leader from the neighboring state’s police.

However, the PDP leadership made it clear that their supreme leader would undergo the due judicial process, fighting it “legally, politically and democratically” and there would be no opposition from the workers if the police enters the orphanage complex and arrest him.

“This is a handiwork of (the federal) IB (Intelligence Bureau) and the drama is being enacted according to a pre-written script. They told me that they listed me as an accused temporarily but I have nothing to do with this sort of subversive activities,” Ma’dani said maintaining that he never supported terrorism in the name of Islam.

Ma’dani had spent nearly a decade in jail as an under-trial in the neighboring Tamil Nadu state on charges of conspiring the 1998 serial blasts in Coimbatore allegedly targeting Bharatiya Janata Party leader LK Advani in which 58 people were killed. The trial court later acquitted him and he has since been active in Kerala politics supporting the ruling Leftist coalition in elections.

The police in Bangalore however refused to confirm or deny the reports. “We have added six more people into the list of defendants and four of them are already in our custody. We’ll pick up the remaining two soon,” said Bangalore City Joint Commissioner Alok Kumar.

According to the police, Naseer, a former leader of Ma’dani’s Islamic Service Society (ISS) as well as PDP, its reincarnation after a ban, and identified as the south Indian commander of the LeT, procured the explosives from Kerala and executed the plan while another Gulf-based former associate Sarfras Nawas arranged finances for the operations.

The ‘breakthrough’ came after the Bangladeshi authorities caught Naseer and handed him over to India while Nawas was “brought to India” with the help of the Gulf emirate” and arrested him here. They had also reportedly confided their involvement in the blasts in other Indian cities as well.

In the meanwhile, four Kerala youths died in a “shootout” with the security forces in Kashmir while trying to cross the borders. They were sent by Naseer to undergo “training in terror strikes” as the Bangalore blasts “failed to make much impact”. Most of Naseer’s associates, including those died in Kashmir were once followers of Ma’dani who denounced violence after his release from jail.

The PDP has said it was snapping all ties with the Left Democratic Front (LDF) and called for ten days of protests all over the state against the move to arrest Ma’dani and to explain the party’s position on the issue.

“We know a section of IB officers are conspiring to brand Ma’dani as a terrorist and exile him from the state forever. This is part of a larger conspiracy involving fascist forces,” PDP general secretary Ghafour Puthuppady said.

Mullappally Ramachandran, the federal junior home minister, rejected the PDP’s claim and said it was not the business of the IB to conspire against any individual and it was unfortunate that such allegations are being hurled at the officers of the premiere agency.