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IAF man held for church blasts

BANGALORE, Aug 17 (PTI) — The police has arrested an Indian Air Force officer and two other members of a little-known sect, Deendar Anjuman, blamed for the recent bomb blasts in churches in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.

Karnataka detectives arrested Syed Hasan-ur-Zama, a Junior Warrant Officer of the IAF, not only in connection with the recent bomb blasts in churches in the two states but also for allegedly collecting and passing on “sensitive” defence information to Pakistan, senior police officials said here today.

Zama (50), who hails from Vijayawada district of Andhra Pradesh and is a member of Deendar Anjuman Channabasaveshwara Siddique, was taken into custody by sleuths of the Corps of Detectives (CoD) on August 8 from Gurgaon in Haryana, Karnataka Director-General of Police C. Dinakar and DGP (CoD) V.V. Bhaskar told reporters.

The CoD, probing the bomb attacks at Wadi in Gulbarga district, Hubli and Bangalore in June and July, claimed Zama had admitted to collecting and forwarding sensitive information about the location of various vital installations, defence establishments and railway bridges among others to contacts in Pakistan.

Mr Dinakar said the CoD investigation had revealed that the conspiracy regarding the attacks in Andhra Pradesh, Goa and Karnataka was hatched at the annual ‘Urs’ at Deendar Anjuman Ashram at Asifnagar in Hyderabad last year.

Meanwhile, sleuths of Crime Investigation Department of Andhra Pradesh nabbed two other Deendar Anjuman activists in Hyderabad and Nanded in Maharashtra in this connection.

Shaik Hashim Ali, a 24-year-old videographer and resident of Asifnagar area, was picked up at a bus stand today and the Nanded city chief of Deendar Anjuman Trust, Barkat (40) was arrested on August 14.

With these arrests, the total number of persons apprehended in connection with the bomb blasts rose to 27 in Andhra Pradesh.