NIA arrests Bengaluru cafe blast mastermind, bomber from Kolkata

NEW DELHI: In a major breakthrough in the Bengaluru cafe blast case, NIA on Friday arrested two suspects from Kolkata.
Adbul Matheen Taha and Mussavir Hussain Shazeb were apprehended from their hideout near the city.
According to NIA, Shazib placed the IED at the cafe while Taha is the mastermind behind the planning, execution of the blast, and subsequent evasion from the law.
The accused were hiding under false identities.
NIA, Central intelligence agencies, and state police agencies of West Bengal, Telangana, Karnataka, and Kerala were involved in the operation.
At least 10 people were injured after an IED blast at the famous Whitefield eatery, Rameshwaram Cafe, on March 1.
NIA had announced a cash reward of Rs 10 lakh for information about the suspect in the case.
The federal agency had also released several visuals of the suspect travelling in various buses in Karnataka.

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee during a election rally in Cooch Behar aserted that it was her govt which ensured arrest of two accused in the Bengaluru cafe blast case.
Mamata also said that BJP was spreading misinformation about Bengal not being safe.

A cap that one of the suspects, Musavir Hussain Shazib, was wearing helped police identify the duo after CCTV images showed their faces before they bought the cap. The accused were spotted in Chennai in January.
Soon after the blast NIA had recovered the cap. The Tamil Nadu team found that Shazib and his aide Abdil Mathern Taha had bought the cap from a mall in Mylapore in Chennai and stayed in a lodge at Triplicane.
Earlier, investigators had found several pieces of CCTV footage of the suspect, but his face remained covered by the cap.
Zooming in on the image, NIA sleuths had noted down the serial number on the cap and tracked it to a shop in the mall that sold it in Jan.