Delhi blast: NIA begins quizzing J&K youth Wasim Akram Malik

A day after getting custody of Kishtwar youth Wasim Akram Malik, suspected to be the mastermind in the Sep 7 Delhi High Court blast, India's National Investigation Agency (NIA) Saturday questioned him through the day to establish his role.

However, the NIA sleuths are yet to make a breakthrough in their interrogation of Malik, as it was the first day of the 14-day custody of him that the country's premier terror probe agency obtained from a Delhi local court, sources said here.

They are also trying to get him to help in reaching to his brother Junaid, suspected to be a Hizb-ul-Mujahideen militant who planted the bomb outside the Delhi High Court.

The NIA also wants to figure out if Malik was a member of the Bangladesh-based Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islami (HuJI).

Malik, a medical student in Bangladesh, was reportedly handed over to the NIA in the Delhi airport soon after he landed here from Bangladesh. But there were conflicting reports that said he was held in Bangladesh and later handed over to Indian authorities, who brought him to Delhi.

He will now be in NIA custody till Oct 21 up to when the investigators get to question him, along with another accused and his fellow Kishtwar resident Amir Abbas Dev, who too was given to NIA for seven-day custody and interrogation by the Delhi local court Friday.

Sources said Malik is the son of a Kishtwar hydel project worker and was in Bangladesh for five years now, studying medicine. The investigators, after learning that he was in Jammu on Sep 7, the day of the blast in front of Delhi High Court and getting a corroboration from the other three accused already arrested, sought to bring him back to India.

Another report suggested that the NIA had asked his parents to ask Malik to return to India.