In connection with the recent Rameshwaram Cafe blast, the Bengaluru City Police are probing the networks of at least four terror suspects from Karnataka who have given security agencies the slip and are still at large, informed sources said. At least two of them are believed to be based abroad, while another, known just by his code name “Colonel”, is yet to be identified.
Owing to the similarities in the assembling of the explosive, the detonator, timer and the mechanism used to explode the bomb, between the recent explosion in the restaurant and the cooker bomb blast at Mangaluru on November 19, 2022, the police are now probing the networks of the absconding accused — Abdul Mateen Taha, 30, Musabir Hussain and ‘Colonel’ — in the Mangaluru case, the sources said.
This alleged module, inspired by the Islamic State (IS), originated from Shivamogga district. Mohammed Shariq, 30, who turned up with a cooker bomb that went off in his hands in an autorickshaw, first came on the radar of the agencies with a pro-terror graffiti in Mangaluru in 2020, along with his associates Arafath Ali, Yasin and Maaz Muneer. All three have been arrested now.
