This story is from November 16, 2019

Ex-Army doctor held in Hyderabad by UP ATS for Kushinagar mosque blast

Three days after stacked explosives went off in a mosque in Kushinagar district of Uttar Pradesh, a former army major, Dr Ashfaq Alam, was picked up by UP Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) from Hyderabad’s Old City area and flown to Lucknow on Friday for interrogation. Dr Alam has been arrested, taking the arrest count in the case to six.
Ex-Army doctor held in Hyderabad by UP ATS for Kushinagar mosque blast
Representative image
HYDERABAD/LUCKNOW/GORAKHPUR: Three days after stacked explosives went off in a mosque in Kushinagar district of Uttar Pradesh, a former army major, Dr Ashfaq Alam, was picked up by UP Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) from Hyderabad’s Old City area and flown to Lucknow on Friday for interrogation. Dr Alam has been arrested, taking the arrest count in the case to six.
Dr Alam, who was present in Kushinagar at the time of the blast, is accused of tampering with evidence and criminal conspiracy.
The doctor is the grandson of one of the key accused in the case, Haji Qutubuddin, who would frequent the mosque to offer namaz. Qutubuddin is charged with stashing explosives in the mosque in a bag. ATS officials privy to the probe said Dr Alam had come to his hometown Kushinagar to attend a relative’s wedding on Nov 8.
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 UP ATS and Counter-Intelligence, Telangana Police, from his East Janaki Nagar residence in Golconda. Dr Alam’s wife too is a doctor in the Army and is posted in Hyderabad.
UP additional DGP (ATS) Dhruva Kant Thakur told TOI: “Dr Alam called up police about an explosion in a mosque, citing short-circuit in the invertor’s battery. By the time police arrived, the doctor had fled along with Qutubuddin.”
UP police personnel, who were on high alert in the aftermath of the Ayodhya verdict, swiftly arrested five, including the mosque’s cleric Azimuddin.
During interrogation of the accused, Dr Alam’s antecedents were confirmed and a team was quickly sent to Hyderabad to nab him.

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 accused during quizzing. Cleric Azimuddin, who was brought from West 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 Azimuddin, Dr Alam and Qutubuddin, the three others in police net are 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.
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