Bengaluru: The blast in city’s liveliest area Church Street on Sunday, which injured 4 people, one of whom later died, is reportedly the handiwork of the five absconding SIMI fugitives known as Faisal’s gang, who had escaped from the Khandwa prison in Madhya Pradesh in October 2013 and are reportedly behind a number of criminal and terror attacks.
They include the May 1 train blast in the Bengaluru-Guwahati Express at Chennai Central Railway station in which one city-based techie P. Swathi lost her life and the placing of the two country-made bombs near the railway track at Kinwala village in Khanapur taluk in Belagavi district. City police Commissioner M.N. Reddi said that while it was too early to say that it was a terror attack, the low intensity blast was carried out by someone to “strike terror in the minds of people.”
The Intelligence Bureau had repeatedly cautioned Indian metros including Bengaluru of an impending terror attack in December. The five fugitive terror suspects – Aizazuddin alias Aizaz Mohammed Azizuddin, Zakir Hussain alias Sadiq Badrul Hussain, Mehboob alias Guddu Ismail Khan, Aslam Ayub Khan and Amzad Ramzan Khan, along with Abu Faisal alias Doctor, who is now in police net had escaped from the Shahid Loknayak Tantya Bhil District Jail in Khandwa, Madhya Pradesh in October last year and are absconding since then. Faisal’s gang is reportedly behind the bank heist in Karimnagar in Telangana in February this year, the Chennai train blast and the July 10 blast in the parking lot of Faraskhana and Vishrambag police stations, which are located close to the highly popular and sensitive ‘Dagdusheth Halwai Ganesh’ temple in Pune. In September the fugitives fled from a house in Bijnor in Western Uttar Pradesh after an accidental blast of the explosives they had assembled to plan bomb blasts across the country.
