2022 Coimbatore car bomb blast: NIA arrests one more accused

COIMBATORE: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Friday arrested one more accused in the October 2022 car bomb blast case in Tamil Nadu's Coimbatore.
An NIA source identified the arrested person as Mohammed Azarudeen alias Azar, 36, of Anbu Nagar at Ukkadam. He is the 13th accused to be arrested in the case, which the NIA took over on October 27, 2022.
“Azar is already lodged in the Viyyur high-security prison in Thrissur in Kerala in connection with another case.He was earlier arrested and chargesheeted in the Tamil Nadu ISIS module case and sent to judicial custody,” the source said.
According to him, Azar had attended secret ‘bayan’ classes along with the other accused in the October 23 car blast case. Jamesha Mubeen, who drove the car with the improvised explosive device and died in the explosion in front of the Kottai Sangameshwarar Temple on Eswaran Kovil Street at Ukkadam, was also part of the team. “It was at these classes that the accused were indoctrinated with the ISIS ideology and motivated to commit acts of terror.”
Mubeen, the source said, had met Azar in the prison along with two other arrested accused in the case. “They then hatched the ‘Sathyamangalam conspiracy’ (the car bomb blast plan was concretized in the Sathyamangalam forest in Erode district) to avenge Azar’s arrest and get him released through a jail attack.”
He said Mubeen and his associates were inspired by hardcore ISIS ideology. “They conspired to commit the act of terror after taking ‘bayath’ or allegiance to its self-proclaimed caliph Abu-Al-Hasan Al-Hashimi Al-Qurashi. As per our investigations, the accused intended to take revenge on ‘kafirs’ (non-believers of Islam) through this terror attack.”
The investigation agency has so far filed two chargesheets in the case before the NIA court, Poonamallee, Chennai. Six accused were chargesheeted on April 20 this year and another five on June 2. The twelfth accused, Mohammed Idris, was arrested on August 2.
Another source said Azar was in touch with the 2019 Sri Lankan serial blast mastermind and National Thowheed Jama’at leader Maulvi Zahran Bin Hashim on Facebook and telegram app. “Azar had shared videos related to ISIS ideology to Hashim.”
Azar was working with Qibla Tours and Travels on Saramedu Road at Karumbukkadai in Coimbatore. “An ISIS sympathizer, he was constantly in touch with Hashim, a suicide bomber in the Easter bomb attack in Sri Lanka in April 2019. The NIA suspect that Azar had recruited youths from Tamil Nadu to attack a few places in South India,” the source said.