The city crime branch officials claimed that the arrest of the five suspected Indian Mujahideen (IM) members last month helped them track their control room in Pune.
The control room was visited and used as a conference hall by the bigwigs of the terror outfit.
Officials claimed that Mohammad Arif Badruddin Shaikh alias Arif Badar alias Ladden, 38, who was arrested on September 23, was instrumental in the arrest of the other IM members.
“Arif was taken to Pune to purchase and manufacture timer bombs. However, since he had been there only once, Arif could not remember the exact location. It took us six days to get the correct address,” said a crime branch official, on condition of anonymity.
The official further said that the control room was a 1,200-sq-ft 2-BHK flat in Ashoka Mews Building in Kondwa area. “The flat is originally owned by businessman Raza Nabah, who had rented it out to a doctor (name held),” said the official.
The doctor, however, made acquaintance with the IM members at a mosque in Pune. After a few meetings, they asked the doctor to rent them a room in the said flat.
“When Arif took us to the house, we conducted a thorough search and found that there were several books on jihad. Also, there were CDs containing jihadi operations and the atrocities done on Muslims,” said the official, adding, that there were several computers, laptops and televisions sets in the room.
According to the official, IM members used to visit the control room if they had to contact any of their counterparts in other parts of the country. “Arif later revealed that several bigwigs of IM, including Roshan Khan alias Riyaz Bhatkal, used to visit that house quite frequently.”
Confident that other members would return to the house, crime branch sleuths started to camp outside the building. “A day after the Mehroli blasts, on September 28, we nabbed Anique Shafiq Syed, Asif Bashir Shaikh and Mohammad Akbar Ismail Chaudhary at the house. They said that they had come to the control room to find out
who was behind the Mehroli blast,” the official said.
