On the afternoon of March 1, during the busy lunch hour at The Rameshwaram Cafe, a popular restaurant in Brookefield in Bengaluru’s Information Technology corridor, a low intensity IED bomb exploded leaving nine people injured.
The Bengaluru City Police, armed with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and a partial image of the suspected bomber’s face, launched a manhunt scouring footage from hundreds of CCTV cameras. Even as the episode triggered political slugfest ahead of the Lok Sabha elections 2024, the Karnataka government handed over the investigation to the National Investigation Agency (NIA).
The trail that began in Bengaluru crisscrossed through several cities in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu to end in West Bengal. On April 12, in a significant breakthrough, the NIA arrested Mussavir Hussain Shazib, 30, the alleged bomber, and Abdul Matheen Ahmed Taahaa, 30, chief conspirator of the blast near Kolkata, West Bengal.