Police raid Mangaluru blast accused Shareeq's house

The police on Sunday (November 20) conducted searches of Mangaluru autorickshaw blast accused Shareeq’s rented house in Madahalli, located around 13 km from Mysuru.

A bomb squad has been deployed in the area. According to media reports, the police said Shareeq had rented the one-room accommodation last month, telling the house owner that he was in the city for mobile repair training.

Preliminary investigations show that Shareeq, the accused in the autorickshaw blast in coastal Mangaluru, has terror links.

Also watch: Mangaluru auto-rickshaw blast an ‘act of terror,’ says Karnataka DGP

Ahead of the Karnataka Assembly elections to be held in May next year, this blast in an auto took place in the communally charged coastal town of Mangaluru. Shareeq was carrying a cooker fitted with batteries and a low-intensity explosive device which went off, injuring both the driver and him on Saturday (November 19).

Shareeq also stole the identity of a person who resides in Karnataka’s Hubballi district by using his fake Aadhaar. The Karnataka police today traced the identity of the man who the accused had impersonated and said the Aadhaar card found near the blast site belonged to Premraj Hutagi, a railway employee in the Tumakuru division of Indian Railways.

Hutagi told the media that he had lost his Aadhaar card twice in the last two years. And that he came to know of the incident in Mangaluru only after the police told him about it. The police called him on the phone and questioned him about his lost Aadhaar, his parents and asked him for other information about him. Hutagi shared all his information with the police.

Also read: Major terror organisations may be behind Mangaluru blast: State home minister

According to Hutagi, he had failed to report the loss of his card since he had the unique ID through which he got another card printed. “I never knew it would be misused to this extent,” he told NDTV. The accused, who is injured and unable to talk to the police to give more details, and the driver are undergoing treatment.

From the “stolen” Aadhaar card, the police said it gives them a “fair idea” that Shareeq was planning to target something, but they did not know what.  Karnataka police chief Praveen Sood said that they were not ruling out his connection with the recent Coimbatore blast.

Also, the police said that Shareeq who is from Karnataka, had also procured a SIM card from Coimbatore, which was not in his name. The tower locations showed that he had travelled across Tamil Nadu. The police are examining his call logs to find his associates in Tamil Nadu.

Meanwhile, Karnataka home minister Araga Jnanendra said that the state police has launched an intensive investigation into the auto rickshaw blast incident in Mangalore. “It is suspected that this may be a terror related incident. Along with the state police, central investigation teams will also join hands to investigate the incident,” he added.