UP ATS picks up former Army officer from Hyderabad in Kushinagar mosque blast

LUCKNOW/HYDERABAD/GORAKHPUR: Three days after stacked explosives blew up in a mosque in Kushinagar district of Uttar Pradesh, a former Major with the Indian Army, Dr Ashfaq Alam, was picked up from Hyderabad Old City by UP Anti-Terrorist Squad (UPATS) and flown to Lucknow on Friday, en route to Kushinagar for interrogation. The blast took place in Bairagi Patti village under Turk Patti police station area of the district on Monday.The doctor was interrogated before being taken into custody late Friday, taking the arrest count to six. Samples from the blast site have been sent to Agra forensic lab for zeroing in on nature of explosives.

Dr Alam served in the Army Medical Corps till 2017 before taking voluntary retirement to prepare for civil services examination. He was picked up around 9am on Thursday in a joint operation of UPATS and Counter-Intelligence, Telangana police from his East Janaki Nagar residence in Golconda area of Hyderabad. Dr Alam, who was present in Kushinagar at the time of blast, is accused of conniving with five other accused for tampering with evidence and criminal conspiracy among other charges. The doctor is the grandson of one of the key accused, Haji Qutubuddin, a resident of the village who would frequent the mosque to offer namaz. Qutubuddin is charged with stashing explosives in the bag. Alam’s wife too is a doctor in the Army and is posted in Hyderabad.
“Dr Alam called up police about an explosion in a mosque, citing short-circuit in the invertor’s battery. When police arrived at the spot, the doctor had fled along with his grandfather, Haji Qutubuddin,” said additional director-general of police (ATS) Dhruva Kant Thakur.
UP Police, who were on high alert in the aftermath of the Ayodhya verdict, swiftly arrested four people, including the mosque’s cleric, Azimuddin, a resident of West Bengal. During interrogation of the accused, Dr Alam’s antecedents were confirmed and a team was quickly dispatched to Hyderabad to nab him. ATS officials privy to the probe said, Dr Alam came to his hometown, Kushinagar, to attend a relative’s wedding on November 8.
Talking to TOI, additional director-general of police, ATS, Thakur, said, “Dr Alam was unable to give a convincing reply on why he fled the blast site after calling police. He was confronted with the other four accused during quizzing. Cleric Azimuddin, who was brought from Bengal at a salary of Rs 6,000 to serve as the muezzin, kept changing his statements. First, he said the bag with explosives was kept in the mosque even before he became imam. Later, he blamed Qutubuddin for keeping the bag.”
Besides cleric Azimuddin, Dr Alam and his grandfather Haji Qutubuddin, three others in police net include Javed Ansari, Izhar and Ashiq Ansari. They have been booked for rioting, defiling place of worship with intent to insult religion, criminal conspiracy and under the Explosives Act. Another accused, Salauddin Ansari aka Munna is on the run.