Bengaluru cafe blast 'mastermind' and 'bomber' held in Bengal

NEW DELHI/KOLKATA: In a big success for an NIA-led multi-agency operation spanning 42 days, the absconding alleged mastermind and executor of the March 1 blast at Bengaluru's Rameswaram Cafe were arrested from their hideout in Bengal's New Digha on Friday.
The hunt for Mussavir Hussain Shazib - who had allegedly planted the bomb and Abdul Matheen Taha, suspected mastermind who also charted the duo's escape and evasion from the law - was carried out in close coordination with central agencies and state police of Bengal, Telangana, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, UP, Delhi and Andhra.

After being alerted that the two were in a lodge in New Digha under assumed identities, NIA requested Bengal police to secure them.
"We nabbed them within two hours of receiving first information," SP (E Midnapore) Soumyadip Bhattacharya said.
Sanjay Agarwal & Uday Das to Yusha Patel & Vignesha BD, they used several fake IDs
The coordinated NIA-Bengal Police action to nab two of Bengaluru cafe blast accused on Friday came days after an NIA raid in East Midnapore in another case generated a row, with Trinamool govt accusing the central agency’s officers of “attacking” locals and NIA lodging a complaint about “unprovoked” aggression by locals leaving one of its officer injured and an official vehicle damaged.
Both Abdul Matheen Taha and Mussavir Hussain Shazib, who along with co-accused Maaz Muneer Ahmed were involved in earlier terror cases too, were on the run since the March 1 explosion that left nine injured. NIA had declared Rs 10 lakh reward each on Taha and Shazib and released their photos and videos on social media, seeking information from the public. An NIA court in Kolkata granted the agency three-day transit remand of the two.

Sources said Taha and Shazib were holed up in a New Digha lodge for past four days, after changing their locations in Bengal many times. They had stayed at a Lenin Sarani hotel in Kolkata — Hotel Paradise — on March 13-14 where they told the staff that they had arrived from Darjeeling and were on their way to Chennai.
At two Kolkata hotels, Shazeb used a fake Aadhaar card bearing the name Yusha Shahnawaz Patel and claimed to be from Palghar, Maharashtra. Tahaa used fake papers to identify himself as Vignesha BD from Karnataka at one place and as Anmol Kulkarni at another. At another hotel, they introduced themselves as Sanjay Agarwal and Uday Das, from Jharkhand and Tripura.
Taha and Shazib are residents of Thirthahalli in Karnataka’s Shivamogga district. While Taha is an IT engineer, Shazib is suspected to be a key person influencing the Shivamogga-based southern module of Islamic State (IS).
West Bengal police sources said Taha and Shazib had fled to Chennai after the blast and came to Kolkata 12 days later. NIA sources believe they constantly changed locations and might have visited other southern states. The initial probe found that module head Taha used the cryptocurrency route to finance the operation. He used various conduits, including stolen identities and the IDs of people recruited for the IS cause in different parts of India, to transfer cryptocurrency to Muzammil Sherif to arrange logistics for the blast, an official said. A cap worn by Shazib and discarded after the blast had turned out to be the first lead in the case, and had come from a Chennai shop.
(With inputs from Tamaghna Banerjee)