MUMBAI, 7 November 2006 — Officials of the Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) of Maharashtra Police on Sunday arrested Raees Ahmed Rasak Ali Mansuri, third accused in the September Malegaon bomb blast, and booked him under the draconian Maharashtra Control of Organized Crime Act (MCOCA). The accused was produced before the special MCOCA court Judge Mridula Bhatkar who remanded him to police custody till Nov. 16.
ATS additional commissioner of police, Subodh Jaiswal, when asked about the role played by Mansuri in the blasts case, said that Mansuri was one of the conspirators and had planted one of the bombs that exploded in Malegaon.
According to ATS sources, Mansuri is the brother-in-law of prime accused Shabbir Ahmed Masiullah alias Shabbir Batterywala and was associated with the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). Mansuri had worked in Dubai for 10 years as a car mechanic, but basically he is an electrician. The accused returned to Malegaon from Dubai in 2004 and was working with Shabbir in his battery manufacturing unit in Malegaon.
Speaking to the media, P.K. Jain, special inspector general of police, Nashik Range, said that Mansuri was the owner of a warehouse, where another co-accused Noor ul-Huda had kept the RDX explosives that were used in the Malegaon blasts. When Shabbir left for terrorist training in Pakistan in 2003, he stopped over in Dubai prior to proceeding to Karachi, Jain said.
Mansuri, like his brother-in-law Shabbir, was already in police custody, prior to being arrested in the Malegaon blasts.
As soon as his police custody in the other case expired on Sunday, he was rearrested under MCOCA.
Meanwhile the charge-sheet in the July Mumbai serial train blasts case is likely to be filed in next two weeks, but police officials in hushed tones admitted that the charge sheet may be marred by inadequacies, as it is being prepared in haste and being rushed under intense pressure from the home departments of federal and Maharashtra governments.
The chief of the ATS K.P. Raghuvanshi has acknowledged the difficulty of “rounding off” investigations, implying that crucial facts about the conspiracy and “external influence” are still missing.
Bombay Police Commissioner Anami Narayan Roy said that the charge sheet would elaborate the role of each individual arrested in connection with the train blasts, but ATS officials, however maintain that it would be impossible to put all pieces of the jigsaw in place with the deadline set by the authorities.
A senior police official admitted that it would be a Herculean challenge to establish the involvement of Pakistan and the ISI, though the information provided by the arrested accused suggests that the train blasts was “ratified” by top ranking Lashkar-e-Toiba commanders based in Pakistan.
Another police official said that the ATS had only vague information of the involvement of Pakistan and therefore the charge sheet would not be able to provide “Illuminating details” about the role of Pakistani intelligence agency ISI.
The ATS has failed to get access to at least 35 email accounts of the arrested accused, which would have given them an insight into the manner in which the accused interacted with one another with their Pakistani handlers and which could have also highlighted the role of the ISI.
The inability of the ATS to secure relevant information from Naved Hussein Khan, who was brought to Mumbai from Hyderabad, is another lacuna in the investigation. The agency’s documents show that Naved’s interrogation is incomplete and that the information provided by him is yet to be verified. Khan played a crucial role before the blasts. He had taken the suspected Pakistani operatives to Shaikh’s rented house in Mumbai.
Some top police officials speaking on the condition of anonymity said that the ATS has a very difficult task ahead to prove the charges against the accused as there are several lacunae in the investigations, which are going to make the ATS fall flat on the ground.
