Barack Obama’s 2015 visit: 3 from Bhatkal convicted for terror plot | Bengaluru News – Times of India

Barack Obama and Michelle Obama wave as they pose with Pranab Mukherjee (2nd L) and PM Modi (R) during a home reception at the Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi. (Reuters File Photo)

BENGALURU: A special court for NIA (National Investigation Agency) cases in Bengaluru on Monday held three youths guilty of hatching a criminal conspiracy, illegal possession of explosives, and waging war against the country.
The trio — Syed Ismail Afaq, Abdul Sabur, and Saddam Hussain, all from Bhatkal — had planned to trigger blasts across the country on the eve of the then US president Barack Obama’s visit to India in Jan 2015. The court acquitted two others — Riaz Ahmed and Jainullbuddin, also from Bhatkal — of all charges.
Sources in Central Crime Branch and city police recalled how the conspiracy was cracked when they were investigating the blast at Church Street in Dec 2014 which claimed a woman’s life. CCB sleuths, with the help of inputs from other agencies, decoded an encrypted message sent to a youth in Bhatkal.
The message, reading ‘Shaadi ka din aa rahaa hai.. Jaldi karo (Wedding day is arriving. Act fast)’, was sent from Pakistan in the last week of Nov 2014.
According to sources privy to the investigation, MK Thammaiah, then ACP, CCB and his team succeeded in decoding a few more messages sent to Bhatkal from Pakistan.
Police received information that two youths from Bhatkal would be reaching the city soon with plans of carrying out terror activities.
A team led by Thammaiah monitored the movements of the suspected youths and finally raided a house on Jamia Masjid Road, Bhatkal in the early hours of Jan 15, 2015.
The house, ‘Darul Khaira’ was searched and a huge amount of detonators, gelatine sticks, pipe bombs, explosive substances, circuit boards, timers, gunpowder, printed circuit boards, resistors, diodes, electrolyte capacitors, transistors, regulators, LEDs, a mobile handset, a sim card from the UAE and other materials were found.
The two youths, identified as Syed Ismail Afaq and Abdul Sabur, in their late 30s, were arrested and police started questioning them. “We were of the opinion that we were cracking the Church Street blast case.
As the two spilled the beans, we found that they had nothing to do with the that blast; instead, they were the logistic men for Indian Mujahideen, shouldered with the jobs of storing and transporting explosives,” then joint commissioner of police, CCB, M Chandrasekhar, told TOI.
Two days later, based on information from the two, police raided another house in Pulakeshinagar and seized more materials meant to be used in the explosion. CCB police subsequently arrested Riaz Ahmed, Jainullbuddin and Saddam Hussain.